


Come Away

by saltandrockets



Series: I Don't Want Love [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Daddy Issues, Everything A Goddamn Ordeal In Area Family, Skywalker Family Drama, evil space dads, space latinx, the Skywalker-Organa-Solo-Hux family reunion, the most uncomfortable Life Day since the holiday special
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 02:37:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 44,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12644427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandrockets/pseuds/saltandrockets
Summary: Seventeen years after the war, Shmi Hux attends a long-awaited family reunion.





	Come Away

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was a long time coming. thank you all for being so patient and supportive while I worked.
> 
> if you haven’t read the rest of the series, this installment probably won’t make a lot of sense! this one is from Shmi’s POV, and will move between the present and the past, sort of like Bear.
> 
> also: title from the [song by The Killers,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n81rOHM4Ayc%22) which makes me messy and emotional.

_there’s no one on the radar_  
_no creature in the grove_  
_no reason to be hateful_  
_life is a treasure trove_  
— [“Peace of Mind,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n81rOHM4Ayc) The Killers

\--

  
Maybe Shmi is an uncultured Outer-Rim hick, but she can’t help but goggle a little as the port comes into view. She’s never seen anything like the crowd teeming far below: thousands of beings gathered in the bright heat, a full three days before the holiday they’ve come to celebrate.

Beside her, Delphine’s face is practically pressed against the transparisteel as she takes in the view. Yavin 4 isn’t a large moon, but its place in modern galactic history makes it a tourist hub, much livelier than the rainy little moon Shmi and Delphine come from.

As Kylo guides the shuttle down, Shmi touches her sister’s shoulder to make sure Delphine is looking at her. “What’s the rule?”

“No crying,” Del says, in a flat tone.

“That’s right. Absolutely no crying—not in front of these people, no matter what. You have to be tough, Del.”

“I know. You’ve told me a hundred times.” Delphine pauses to pull the hearing enhancer out of her right ear, fiddle with the settings, and then put it back. The device is small enough to fit neatly inside her ear, not noticeable unless you’re looking for it. “And so has Dad.”

It’s been four days since they last saw Hux. They said goodbye to him at the port not far from their home, and Delphine cried when he put his arms around her, like she could anticipate how awfully she would miss him. That’s part of why Shmi has been worried: Del is almost thirteen, but she’s delicate, and it shows at the worst times.

Shmi didn’t actually say a proper goodbye to Hux. The two of them just looked at each other, uncertain, before Shmi rushed into the shuttle so she wouldn’t have to think of something to say.

Even now, it’s a little hard for her to believe this is really happening. Rey was the one who established contact, a few months after her unexpected appearance three years ago. She sent a message via the holocomm—to this day, Shmi isn’t sure how she managed to connect to their set, since she shouldn’t have had access—to pass along a message from Leia. It was a simple introduction, just a few lines, an invitation to communicate.

It was frightening to Shmi—not the message itself, but what it represented. In the wake of Rey’s visit, her parents had debated whether they ought to move planet, disappear. They only reluctantly decided to stay put because Rey had promised to leave their family in peace.

Now she was entering their space again, and bringing Leia with her. Kylo and Hux were incensed by what they viewed as an invasion of their privacy. To them, Leia’s message felt like a threat.

A month passed. Shmi was constantly tensed, waiting for the sky to fall. Meanwhile, Hux was communicating privately with Rey. To this day, Shmi doesn’t know what passed between them that convinced Hux they didn’t have to move. All she knows is that, finally, he and Kylo allowed their daughters to reply to Leia.

In the beginning, Hux carefully monitored all messages between Leia, Rey, and the girls. He probably found the contents boring: mostly bland updates about their daily lives, the weather on their respective worlds, likes and dislikes, all of them dancing delicately around any meaningful communication. More than once, Leia asked Kylo to open a private channel with her, but he steadfastly refused.

Correspondence has been sporadic these last three years, emails that slowly evolved into prerecorded holos. They’ve never communicated in real time. 

Shmi remembers the first time she watched one of Leia’s messages. It was oddly overwhelming to be the focus of her attention, even through a holo. Almost as far back as she can remember, Shmi has known who Leia Organa is, and who they are in relation to each other. And yet, even now, it’s hard to see images of Leia and believe that this woman is really her grandmother.

Last year, Leia mentioned the possibility of meeting Shmi and Delphine in person someday. Shmi wasn’t sure how she felt—uncomfortable, mostly, and conflicted.

When she brought it up one night at dinner, Kylo practically hit the roof. He had never lectured her so harshly, except for the time she took one of the customized speeders out for a ride without permission and came back with a mangled rear fin. She’d always known he was uncomfortable with her communicating with Leia, but she didn’t realize it would touch a nerve like that.

For his part, Hux didn’t say much beyond a brusque no. To him, that was all that needed to be said. But Shmi could sense that he was privately furious, boiling inside—and also, oddly, a little afraid.

Neither Shmi nor Delphine openly expressed any interest in meeting Leia in person after that. But privately, over the course of months, Shmi became more intrigued by the idea of seeing her grandmother face-to-face. She wanted to feel the way the Force moved around Leia, wanted to know what secrets it could tell her when they were in the same place. Del was curious, too.

Any attempts to broach the subject were immediately shut down by Hux. He wouldn’t hear of it. For a while, when Shmi kept prodding and complaining, he threatened to cut contact with Leia if she didn’t stop trying to arrange a visit. It came to nothing—Del had cried, and that was usually enough to make Hux reconsider—but he was still unhappy with the arrangement as it was.

Shmi’s fathers had wildly different perspectives on most things, which made it easy for her to play them off each other. If Hux said no to some request, she could appeal to Kylo and possibly get a different answer, one she liked better. She’d been doing that since she was a kid, with great success. But in this, they were of one mind. Shmi had never seen her parents agree so completely about anything. Neither of them wanted Leia within three star systems of Shmi and Delphine.

And then, three months ago, Leia extended a specific invitation: Life Day, on Yavin 4. The whole family would be gathered there for the occasion, she said—Leia, and Rey, and someone called Chewie, and a number of others who weren’t actually relatives but who Leia considered important.

Hux’s response was a hard and unequivocal no, and Kylo agreed. Every time Shmi mentioned it, she was shot down. Maddeningly, her parents refused to budge. She thought they’d never come around—and, well, technically they didn’t.

And yet, she’s here with Delphine and Kylo, about to land.

Hux has elected to stay home on Pacifica 9. Someone has to run the garage, Kylo keeps saying, but Shmi understands the real reason. The war is long over, and this holiday is supposed to be a truce—but even so, Hux could never be welcome among these people. They are his enemies, and that will never change.

Thinking of Hux, Shmi has to tamp down on a squirming sense of guilt. She can’t focus on him. She has more important worries just now, as the shuttle’s engines power down.

Before he opens the hatch, Kylo glances back at the girls, his eyes lingering on Shmi. “Are you ready?”

She hears what he’s really saying: _Are you sure? It_ _’s not too late to go home._

Except it is. It’s much too late to turn back now, and they both know it, so she just nods silently and adjusts the lightsaber clipped to her belt. She never wears it like this at home, in plain view, but here, it feels almost like a talisman that can protect her from these strange people, the one thing she brought from home.

When the hatch slides open with a pneumatic hiss, Rey is already there, standing in the dusty sunshine. She knew what time to expect them; she probably got here early, to make sure she would meet them when they arrived.

It’s been three years since any of them saw Rey in person. For weeks, Shmi has envisioned this meeting: what she would say to her cousin, how she would carry herself. But all of a sudden, standing here in real life, she doesn’t know what to do. Her mouth is dry.

All her daydreaming hadn’t prepared her for what it would really feel like to be here, on another world, moments away from seeing a family that doesn’t include her father.

“Well,” Rey says, a bit awkwardly. “Happy Life Day!”

 

\--

 

By speeder, it’s a quick trip to the Dameron homestead. 

Rey parks near a footpath leading up to the house. The four of them climb out, into the bright heat, and Shmi squints at the modest, one-level home just up the slope, at the edge of a patch of wilderness. It’s clearly been added onto over the years, newer sections sprawling out from the original structure, without a perfectly unified aesthetic. A blooming tree stands out front; the path curves just past it.

“This is it,” Rey says. “Shall we?”

Despite herself, Shmi hesitates, glancing at her father for a cue. He doesn’t speak, but she feels a gentle nudge against her back, like the touch of an invisible hand.

It never feels like an intrusion when Kylo uses the Force on her like this—more like guidance. It’s the same power that supported her when she was learning to walk, and sometimes still catches her when she stumbles. She steps onto the path.

As she passes beneath its branches, Shmi can feel the Force rippling around the tree: the light and the dark. It’s strange. Rarely, in the low mountains beyond the city back home, Shmi has encountered Force-sensitive trees, and even rock formations, but nothing like this. The tree in front of the Dameron house is practically _humming_ with the Force. She marvels at it silently.

Rey knocks on the front door, and it opens to reveal a disarmingly handsome man. Shmi recognizes him from pictures she’s seen on the HoloNet, though he’s aged somewhat since his most recent public appearance, his hair touched with tasteful licks of silver: Poe Dameron. He smiles at Rey, and when he looks at the three other people gathered on his doorstep, he manages to maintain the expression.

“Welcome to our humble home,” he says, with a brightness that does not seem entirely forced. He looks between the girls. “You must be Shmi, which makes you Delphine. And, ah—” He tenses when he looks at Kylo—not outwardly, but on the inside, so that Shmi can only barely sense it, something within him tightening defensively. She’s not sure what to make of it. “You’ll have to remind me. Is it Kylo or Ren these days?”

“Ren will be fine.” He says it almost grudgingly.

It’s odd for Shmi to hear any part her father’s name spoken so casually, in the open air. The only person who calls him Kylo is Hux, and only ever inside their home. Phasma calls him Ren behind closed doors. And to everyone else, their friends and neighbors, he’s Eben. But Shmi supposes there’s no need for pretense in the Dameron house. Everyone here already knows who they are.

“Say, are you girls hungry?” Poe asks suddenly. He focuses on Shmi and Delphine again, a benign smile on his face. If it’s an effort, Shmi can’t tell. “I bet you are—long trip and all. Dinner’s not for a couple hours, but I’m sure we can scrounge up something. And, hey, you can meet the gang.”

As he steps aside to clear the doorway, Rey flashes Shmi a small, reassuring smile. It doesn’t really help.

Shmi steps cautiously over the threshold, Delphine practically treading on her heels, and into the large, bright sitting room. She recognizes the new faces she sees from the holo Rey sent a few weeks ago. Still, she lets Poe make the introductions.

Seated on the couch is Clauda, the oldest Dameron child, about twenty-two standard years old. She’s a Togruta with smooth red-brown skin and white markings that sweep around her eyes and along her cheekbones; she’s young enough that her montrals are only gently curved. The youngest girl is in her lap, holding some kind of children’s holobook—a five-year-old human with reddish curls named Amara. To Shmi’s knowledge, Amara is a recent addition, adopted within the last year.

Clauda acknowledges the newcomers with a polite smile, though her shoulders are a little tense. “Glad you could make it,” she says, meeting Shmi’s eyes for just a moment, and all Shmi can manage is a stiff nod in return. She has a problem talking to girls; as much as she likes to look at them, ideally from a distance, she doesn’t cope well when they look at her. Too much pressure. Phasma’s always teasing her about it.

Meanwhile, Amara is oblivious to any tension in the room. She waves enthusiastically, and Shmi smiles despite herself. The little girl reminds her of Delphine, a bit.

As they follow Poe into the kitchen—a bright, open space with a comically large dining table—Kylo asks, “Where is she?”

Shmi knows exactly who he means. She’s been wondering herself. All this time, she’d assumed that Leia would be here to meet them as soon as they got to the house, or even at the port, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

Poe glances up. “Rey didn’t tell you? She’s delayed on Coruscant.”

“Delayed?” The word slips out before Shmi can stop it. She looks at Rey in confusion.

“Unexpected business—you know how it is,” Rey says, with a helpless sort of shrug. “She should be along the day after tomorrow. That’s what she told me.”

Kylo makes a derisive noise. “I’m sure she did.”

While he and Rey exchange a tense look, Poe coughs. “So how was the trip? I hear you girls haven’t been off-world before. Breaking atmo for the first time is a hell of a thing—”

Somewhere, a door bangs open. Two human boys tumble into the kitchen from the hallway, speaking loudly together, a chirping orange-and-white droid rolling wildly at their feet. Again, Shmi recognizes them from the holo: Mateo, the oldest boy, about twenty. He has sandy-brown skin and thick dark hair wound back in a knot. His face is all planes and angles, heavy brows framing deep-set eyes. Gallim follows closely behind him. One of his eyes is cloudy and blind; the other is sharp and dark. He’s a rangy nineteen-year-old, taller than his brother, with wiry black curls and smooth, deep brown skin.

“Hey, Rey,” Mateo says blithely, barely glancing at the other people clustered in the middle of the kitchen before he opens the fridge and begins to paw through it. Gallim, meanwhile, takes a long, slow look at the three strangers. He must know exactly who they are.

“We’ve got guests,” Poe chides, which prompts Mateo to look up from the fridge. His eyebrows arch when he spots Kylo, who isn’t at all focused on him.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Kylo is asking Rey.

Her mouth thins. “It seemed like a poor way to start off. I didn’t want to ruin the mood immediately—”

“So instead, you hid the truth—”

“Oh, for pity’s sake. Not everything is some great conspiracy against you—”

Delphine wilts a little against Shmi’s side, her face pinched, like something’s digging into her. Shmi recognizes it for what it is: Del can be highly sensitive to certain kinds of stimulation, including the energies that living things give off. It’s her Force sensitivity, Kylo always says, which makes that energy blare like bright lights. On top of that, despite the enhancers, the overlapping noises put a strain on her ability to hear and pick apart individual sounds, which can be overwhelming for her.

Kylo’s usually good at noticing when Delphine is stressed like this, but just now, he’s bickering with Rey, distracted. Shmi presses her hand between Del’s shoulders and steers her toward the kitchen door, which leads out into a seemingly endless expanse of thick tall grass and trees with drooping, whip-like limbs. Nobody notices when they slip outside.

The dull droning of insects fills her ears. It’s bright and hot and the air smells funny—but then, maybe Shmi’s just not used to it. She knows that they bounced from planet to planet for a while, when she was a baby, but all her earliest memories are of Pacifica 9: cool and blue and rainy. She’s never known any other world.

Shmi leads Delphine to one of the trees, about fifty meters from the house, and they sit together on the grass in the patchy shade. With her hands, Shmi asks, “What do you think?”

Out here, in the relative quiet, Delphine can probably hear just fine, but sometimes she prefers the hand signs. Shmi likes them, too—it’s like a private language, nuanced, one that most other people can’t easily decipher.

“I don’t know,” Del signs back, pursing her lips. “Maybe we shouldn’t be here. Maybe we should go home.”

Delphine is hard of hearing. Sensorineural hearing loss—that’s what Obie calls it. She reacts to loud noises, and she can follow a conversation in a quiet room, but when multiple people are talking or there’s competing background noise, she struggles.

Obie says it’s an anatomical issue of the inner ear, present at birth, but she wasn’t programmed to scan for it as part of her standard tests; in the medical center where she’d worked, there were other droids for that. Nobody else picked up on it until Del was six.

Around that time, Kylo noticed how hard it could be to get Delphine’s attention, especially outside of their home, where there was usually a clamor of voices and other sounds. She looked intently at people’s faces when they spoke, and she preferred to watch holovids with the volume much higher than Shmi did. Kylo thinks that Del unconsciously relied on the Force to compensate for her hearing, used it to pick up on intentions and nonverbal cues and the shape of other people’s thoughts, which disguised what an effort listening was for her. Even now, between the Force and her lip-reading, Delphine sometimes gives the impression of hearing much better than she actually does.

It came as a shock to Hux. Up to that point, whenever Del didn’t respond or failed to do as she was told, he’d just thought she wasn’t paying attention. He didn’t accept Kylo’s explanation right away; Shmi remembers the two of them arguing about it. Intending to prove Kylo wrong once and for all, Hux programmed Obie with a handful of new subroutines, which enabled her to run hearing tests and related diagnostic scans.

To this day, Shmi suspects that he feels guilty for ever scolding Delphine for “not listening.”

Once the tests confirmed Kylo’s suspicions, the shock wore off quickly. Hux approached Del’s hearing like any obstacle that could be engineered around. He took it upon himself to design and build her hearing enhancers, and he made sure the whole family acquired a working vocabulary of hand signs, including Obie.

The enhancers have become an ongoing project for Hux. In the beginning, it was difficult to coax six-year-old Delphine into wearing them; she was constantly pulling the earliest models off of her ears, and she complained that they didn’t help. But as Hux improved the design—made them smaller and more comfortable, tweaked them to cut out more background noise—Delphine wore them more consistently. Hux is determined to perfect the enhancers so she can use them all the time.

“You said you were excited to come,” Shmi says to Delphine now, somewhat insistently, still using her hands. A similar thought has crossed her mind already, which doesn’t bode well for the remaining days of their trip. She wants so badly for this to have been a good idea, to have been worth all the strife. “You wanted to go off-world.”

“I thought it would be fun. But they don’t want us here, I don’t think. And Dad…” Delphine trails off, making a nebulous gesture.

“What about him?”

Delphine squirms under her gaze. “He’s unhappy,” she signs at last.

Shmi huffs. “Of course. He didn’t want us going in the first place. Remember how mad he was whenever we talked about it?”

“Not that. Well, not just that. He’s unhappy about you.”

Shmi senses the footsteps on the grass before she hears them; likewise, Delphine doesn’t need to hear them at all. Looking up and around, they see two girls approaching from the house. Again, Shmi recognizes them from the holo: Wileen, whose cinnamon-brown curls are gathered into a kind of puff on top of her head, tied with a ribbon. She’s about the same age as Delphine, Shmi recalls, maybe thirteen. Nofi is a little younger, a waif of a girl with close-cropped dark hair and olive skin.

“Hello,” calls Wileen, as she and her sister approach the tree. She gives a little wave, which Shmi cautiously returns. “What are you doing out here?”

“It was loud,” Delphine says simply, like that explains everything.

Wileen nods a little, so maybe it does. Then she drops onto the grass beside them. She doesn’t say anything more, just studies them.

“Can you really use the Force?” Nofi asks, in a loud whisper, sitting cross-legged on the grass beside her sister. Her eyes are dark and brimming with curiosity, though surely she’s seen the Force demonstrated before, if she grew up around Rey.

“Yeah. It’s not a secret or anything,” Shmi tells her. Not around here, anyway. Back home, she has to be careful not to use the Force outside of their home, where other people might see. She waves her hand, tapping into the little well of power that she imagines is tucked under her heart, and a few fallen leaves blow off the grass and swirl around above their heads. She makes the leaves dance closer to Delphine, who accepts them, spinning them in a different pattern. A little showy, maybe, but it’s a novelty to be able to do this in public.

“But you’re not a Jedi like Rey,” Nofi says. It’s not quite a question.

“No. I can’t be. And I don’t want to be, either.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not cut out for it,” Shmi says, because it’s easier than explaining that she’s too close to the dark side to be a Jedi. Not that it matters. She doesn’t know of any order of Force users that really appeals to her anymore, even if one still exists.

As a little girl, she was fascinated by stories of Luke Skywalker, but the shine rubbed off as she grew up. There was a time when she fantasized about the Knights of Ren, of taking on her father’s sacred title, but it doesn’t work like that. The Sith are long gone, of course, and she would’ve made a poor one, probably.

Besides, Shmi isn’t sure she wants to dedicate her whole life to the Force. She’s not sure of anything, really. Seventeen years old, and she has no idea who she’s going to be. Hux had his whole life mapped out when he was much younger than her—but, then, his plans went completely sideways. Maybe it’s better not to plan too much.

“How come you don’t have a lightsaber?” Wileen asks, looking at Delphine.

“My training isn’t complete,” Delphine mumbles. It’s a bit of a sore spot for her: As soon as Shmi built her lightsaber, Delphine became desperate for her own. Kylo is always telling her to be patient, that she knows deep down that she’s not ready yet—but when she is, all the waiting will have been worth it. “I’ll have my own soon.”

Another person emerges from the house. The boy is dark-haired, pale, and generously freckled, wearing a loose-fitting sleeveless shirt and canvas pants. As he approaches the tree, hands in his pockets, Shmi thinks back to the holo again: Felix Dameron, fifteen years old.

“Hey. I, um—I’m Shmi,” she forces herself to say, when he reaches them. She’s got be more personable than usual if she’s going to get through this trip.

“I know exactly who you are,”  Felix says, in a tone that makes her uneasy. He looks down at her through angular, hooded eyes. From this angle, she can see a birthmark splashed along the side of his throat, like a permanent, reddish ink stain. “Which is why I’m checking on you.”

“Come on, Felix,” Wileen says, in an almost pleading voice. “Remember what Dad said.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do. I also remember what Kylo Ren did to Dad, and now he’s standing in our _kitchen_. And we’re supposed to make nice because it’s Life Day? You’ve got to be kidding me.” He glances at Shmi, who is gaping stupidly up at him, taken aback. “What’re you looking at? I don’t care if you’re Rey’s cousin. You shouldn’t be here.”

“We were invited,” Shmi says stiffly, getting to her feet, because she’d feel too vulnerable otherwise. “I don’t know what your problem is, but—”

Felix barks a laugh. “My _problem_ is that everyone’s standing around, pretending to forget one of your fathers is a murderer, and the other is a genocidal maniac. So what does that make you?”

Something inside of Shmi twitches, pulses behind her eyes. Her face feels hot. “Don’t talk about my dad like that.”

“Like what? It’s true.”

That’s what makes it unbearable, Shmi thinks, but she can’t say that. She doesn’t know how. “I said don’t talk about him.”

“Hux is a war criminal.” Felix pronounces her father’s name like a slur. “Execution would’ve been too good for him. He should be rotting in a cell someplace right now—”

He’s not expecting the blow. She sees the shock on his face, the confusion, when she punches him in the mouth. In all honesty, she wasn’t quite expecting it, either. It just—happened. Instinctively, Felix throws his arms up to shield his face; Shmi grabs him by the wrist, wrenches his arm down, and hits him again. This time, he falls, but he manages to grab a handful of her shirt, dragging her with him.

They topple to the grass together in a snarling heap, grappling blindly, kicking and punching at whatever soft spots they can reach. His knee collides with her ribcage—purely by accident, she thinks, but it knocks the breath out of her all the same. In that moment, only the muscle memories of sparring with her father save her from a shoulder lock. He could’ve snapped her neck in that hold, if he wanted to.

Felix catches her across the jaw so hard that her head snaps to one side, then seizes a handful of her hair, close to the scalp, winding it tight to control her movement. It hurts, enough to make her eyes water but not enough to make her yield. She kicks at him, takes another punch to the face, throws her weight sideways. They roll again, and now she’s got him on his back, shoulders pinned by her knees, under her full weight. Bloody-faced, he doesn’t look afraid, just desperate in a way that’s almost feral.

Shmi’s pulse pounds through her whole body. She tastes blood in her mouth, and she thinks it’s hers, but the knowledge just makes her feel wilder, stronger. That’s the dark side, some part of her knows, fueled by her emotions. She could crush Felix’s windpipe if she wanted, a voice inside of her whispers. She could rip out his tongue. Then he’d never speak badly about her father again. It would be so easy. The power is there, all the time, humming under her skin—

“Shmi!” Her father’s voice reaches her distantly, but doesn’t stop her. She cranks her arm back again, blood on her knuckles—and then someone seizes her under the arms, hauling her backward.

She reacts without thinking, striking out like a startled Loth-cat, and only when she’s slammed onto her back does she realize it’s Finn. Shmi’s pulse is echoing in her ears. Her vision swims a little as she stares up at Finn, disoriented, for a moment that seems to stretch out forever. His eyes are dark and sharp and bright, gentle crow’s feet gathered in the corners. She sees herself reflected in his eyes, tiny and pale.

Boots pound the grass, sprinting. The logical part of Shmi’s brain has kicked back on, and she knows the fight is over, but her body doesn’t. Her muscles are tensed; her blood is racing.

Mechanically, Shmi pushes herself up onto her elbows, and Finn tenses, like she’s a bomb primed to explode. She could throw him thirty feet if she wanted to, she thinks dizzily, but she won’t. Finn doesn’t know that, though. He has no idea what she’s capable of. Sometimes she doesn’t really know, either, like right now—and it frightens her.

“Don’t move,” Finn tells her, a note of warning in his voice. Behind him, Felix is scrambling to his feet. Blood is dripping from his nose, down his chin, onto his shirt.

That’s when she hears her father again: “Get away from her—”

“Pa,” Shmi says, plaintively, unsure of where she means to go with it. He’s standing over her now, blocking Finn’s line of sight. She glimpses the lightsaber hanging from his belt and feels abruptly nauseated. He wouldn’t use it here. He wouldn’t.

“What happened?” Kylo is asking her.

Finn’s voice rises. “She attacked my son, that’s what happened—”

“I don’t care,” Kylo snaps, shooting Finn a hard look. Shmi hasn’t seen him look like this since the night he came home and found Rey in their apartment: wild and furious, ready to tear something apart. “You don’t get to put your pfassking hands on her—”

“And you don’t have any authority here!” Finn takes a step toward Kylo: challenging, unafraid. “You don’t have authority anywhere, so you can stop the posturing—”

That just makes Kylo turn into him, hands curled into fists. Around him, Shmi feels the Force stirring, the darkness rushing in to meet him the way it always meets her.

 _No, no, not now,_ Shmi thinks. “Pa, stop it,” she almost pleads, voice thick. As she climbs to her feet, she feels shaky and weak, like something important has been drained out of her. It’s like that sometimes, when the Force rages through her and then recedes: an emptiness, an absence like a sudden loss of blood, dizzying.

To her surprise, he does. The Force quiets around him. He looks at her, but she can’t bear to meet his eyes.

In her peripheral vision, she’s aware of the rest of the Dameron clan: They’ve spilled out of the house and are standing on the grass, gawking, the orange-and-white droid burbling anxiously at their feet. Rey and Poe have ventured halfway between the house and the tree, conferring quietly together, as if debating whether they ought to step in. Nearest are Delphine, Nofi and Wileen, who scrambled backward when the fight broke out but haven’t gone far.

Again, Kylo asks, each word crisp and distinct: “What happened?”

Shmi hesitates, unsure of how to explain. She glances at Felix, bloody-faced and beaten, half-hidden behind his father—and she says nothing. She doesn’t know if she was wrong when she hit Felix. Maybe she was, though it felt right at the time. Still, she thinks she’d do it again.

“She hit me first,” Felix mumbles, sullen and quiet, like he wants to make this known but doesn’t really want Kylo to hear.

Delphine’s hands are a flurry of movement, quick and expressive. Shmi makes an effort not to interpret the signs; she doesn’t want to rehash it. But when Delphine is done, Kylo gives Finn a poisonous look. “Your son is a little shit,” he says.

Before Finn can respond, Kylo turns stiffly away. He puts a hand between Shmi’s shoulder blades, gently but firmly guiding her. Delphine hurries to fall into step with them. Shmi’s legs move mechanically, without much input from her. Everything seems a little distorted: the sun too bright, her own breathing very loud and harsh in her ears.

As they cross the lawn, she hears Poe cough. “So I guess you’re not staying for dinner.”

 

\--

 

In the end, Rey loans them the speeder, and the three of them head back to the port—Shmi, Delphine, and Kylo. The whole way back, Shmi has a sick, guilty feeling low in her gut. Remembering how the Damerons had looked at her, like she was a wild animal, makes her face go hot with shame.

She wishes she could take it back. She wishes she could take a lot of things back.

They all go their separate ways once they get back to the shuttle. Shmi bounces aimlessly around the common area for a few hours, until evening gathers, dusky and blue. The big halo lamps sputter on one by one, throwing yellow-white light onto the hulls of other ships and the dusty duracrete. Finally, she gathers the courage to stick her head into the cockpit, where Kylo is fiddling with the navigation system.

“I’m going to walk around,” she says, in what she hopes is a casual tone. She’s trying to make an announcement rather than a request. Hux is always saying that self-assuredness is half the battle. “You know, have a look at the port.”

Kylo studies her for a moment, and she worries that he’s going to confine her to the shuttle for the night—or worse, make her talk about what happened at the Dameron house. He’s forever encouraging her to talk about her feelings, to get at the root of why she does things. Such conversations can be excruciating, even if Kylo means well. Shmi prefers not to peel herself open like that, a trait she thinks she inherited from Hux.

She knows she’ll have to discuss the incident eventually; Kylo doesn’t like to let things stew. He’ll probably devise some kind of punishment, though Shmi doubts it will be severe. Hux is the disciplinarian in their household, not Kylo, though even Hux isn’t all that bad.

For now, Kylo doesn’t press the issue. “Don’t go far,” he says at last. “And take Delphine with you.”

Shmi’s mouth drops open. “Pa, I don’t—”

He silences her with a look. “Either she goes with you, or you stay here. Your choice.”

It’s no use complaining. Kylo indulges her, but when his mind is made up, there’s no changing it. Shmi isn’t sure if this is her punishment, or if Kylo is just hoping to deter her from getting into any more brawls. Maybe a bit of both. He must know that she wouldn’t make a public scene with her sister in tow. However much she may gripe about Delphine, Shmi dotes on her, too. She only has one little sister.

 

\--

 

Delphine presses close to Shmi’s side as they get farther and farther from the shuttle, faintly anxious, almost tripping her at one point—but she’s excited, too. Shmi can sense it as clearly as she can see it on her sister’s face. This bustling port is bigger than the one on their moon, more crowded, lively even at night begins to fall.

At Delphine’s insistence, they stop at a food cart to buy unfamiliar pastries from a lavender-skinned Twi’lek. The vendor looks young, not much older than Shmi and half a head shorter, with delicate silver jewelry coiled around her lekku. She’s pretty in a way that makes Shmi a little stupid; Shmi stumbles over her order, and then miscounts her money when she pays. She hates local coin.

The Twi’lek doesn’t laugh at her, at least, and smiles indulgently when she hands over the sugar-dusted puffs wrapped in wax paper. But then, she’s probably used to aliens like Shmi drooling over her, well-practiced in the smiles and head-tilts that draw people to her cart. It doesn’t mean anything, so Shmi pretends not to notice how their hands brush, just barely, as she accepts the pastries, pretends not to notice the warmth of the girl’s pale purple skin.

Once the food is paid for, Shmi steers Delphine away from the cart, as quickly as she can without looking like she’s actually fleeing. The two of them stake out a spot on some grimy duracrete steps, where they can watch the ships land and take off.

“Girls would like you better if you looked them in the face,” Delphine says sagely, around a mouthful of food.

Shmi elbows her. “Can it.”

“Like Uma,” Del goes on, referring to the petite, three-eyed girl who works at the fuel depot. “You think she’s laughing at you all the time, but she’s not. She laughs because she thinks you’re funny. Cute-funny, not stupid-funny. She likes you.”

“And what exactly would you know about it?” Shmi asks with a scowl. “You’re twelve, and you never leave the house. I don’t need advice from you.”

“I know what people are thinking, and you don’t.” That’s only partially true, to Shmi’s knowledge. Delphine can make out the general shape of someone’s thoughts, and sometimes images, if they’re projecting, but she likes to pretend that ability is a bigger deal than it is. “Like when you were arguing with Dad, and he—”

“I told you to shut up, Del.” 

Whether she makes eye contact or not, Shmi knows that pretty girls don’t find her half as interesting as she finds them. She’s human, which ought to help—exotic appeal and all that—but she’s also got a broad face, and a prominent nose, and big ears. She looks too much like Kylo. The features they have in common look all right on him, but they don’t suit her.

Phasma’s always telling her that she would have no trouble if she were just more confident—if she moved purposefully, if she stopped slouching, if she weren’t constantly tripping over her words. “You’re a tall, strapping young woman,” Phasma likes to remind her, usually punctuating the words with a good-natured clap between the shoulder blades. “You ought to be every girl’s dream come true.”

It’s meant to be encouraging, but it usually just makes Shmi feel worse. That’s another thing Phasma gets on her case about: She takes everything as a criticism. Hux says the same thing—that she’s too sensitive, too easy to provoke, emotionally undisciplined. She takes simple things and makes them hard.

For a while, Shmi and Delphine sit without speaking. The foot-traffic flows around them like water around rocks, carrying with it the many-layered burble of alien languages. It reminds Shmi of when she was a little girl and Kylo would take her to the port at the edge of the city to watch the ships come and go. He’d point out the different models, or have her close her eyes and listen to the engines—each one had its own distinct sound.

“I spent a lot of time in ports like this when I was a kid,” he’d told her once, when she asked him how he knew so much about ships. She couldn’t have been older than seven or eight, a cold clear morning. “My father was a pilot. So was my uncle.”

Back then, it was strange for Shmi to think that her father might have a father of his own. Her world was very small, containing just the four of them: Shmi, and her parents, and her sister. From her little-girl perspective, Hux and Kylo weren’t quite people in their own right, but more like extensions of her. It was hard to visualize anything beyond their family unit.

“Where’s your dad now?” Shmi had asked, breath clouding faintly in the icy air. By that time, she’d been told about Kylo’s family, in the simplest possible terms. But her parents always talked about events that happened many years ago, not of what might be happening now.

Kylo didn’t grimace, but it was a near thing. “He died. Before you were born.”

“Oh.” For eight-year-old Shmi, that was enough of an answer. It would be a few more years before she became curious about exactly how Han Solo died, and before Kylo told her what actually happened.

He calls it a mistake now, a terrible mistake, the worst thing he ever did. It became clear to him the instant it happened, when he killed his father and instead of power, he found only a deep and consuming emptiness. But there was no taking it back. He had committed to his course, and he could only move forward, without an essential piece of his heart.

 _Sometimes,_ her father likes to say, _you break something so badly that it can_ _’t be fixed. You have to live with your mistake, and remember it, and never make it again._

Shmi glances at her sister, wipes the powdered sugar off her mouth and says, “Don’t tell Pa that we already ate.”

 

\--

 

As far back as Shmi could remember, Kylo told her that love was of the dark side.

Love made you selfish, he said. It made you reckless, and it made you brave, and the whole spectrum of passionate emotions tapped into the dark side of the Force. That was a large part of why the Jedi forbade attachment, though he said he didn’t fully understand it until the year he and Hux spent apart.

When she was little, Shmi was always begging to hear the tale of how her parents fell in love. It seemed so grand to her then—thrilling and romantic, like something out of a holodrama. Kylo was happy to tell her, as many times as she liked, at least partly because the soppy details embarrassed Hux. They met on a starship and couldn’t stand each other at first. Later on, they had to keep their relationship a secret. And then Hux was captured by the Resistance while Kylo was halfway across the galaxy; neither of them knew that Hux was carrying Shmi.

“I dreamed of him,” Kylo told her once, on a rainy night when she was twelve. “I could touch his mind from a great distance.”

The two of them had spent the day together, buying parts for a custom swoop bike, and got caught in the rain on the way home. They’d ducked into a Calamari noodle shop at the edge of the port, which was already packed with people who also wanted to escape the downpour. The air was thick with the smell of food and the gargle of alien languages. Shmi and Kylo were huddled together on a low bench that ran along the wall, crammed between other customers, eating an unfamiliar salty soup and nutty brown bread.

“You could never do that before,” Shmi said eagerly. She knew this part well.

Kylo nodded. “Right. And I had visions of you, clearer than anything the Force had ever showed me. That was how I found out you were going to be born.”

She’d always liked hearing that, though Kylo wouldn’t tell her about the visions themselves. It made her feel important, special, worthy of the Force’s notice.

“For a while, I thought it was my master’s guidance that was making me stronger, more attuned to the Force,” Kylo went on, using a piece of bread to mop up the dregs of the soup. “Eventually, I realized it was because I loved your father. I’d loved him for a long time, but I didn’t know it until we were apart—humans can be foolish like that.” He smiled a little as he said it, self-deprecating. “And I loved you, too, before I ever met you. That was the power of the dark side.”

“It made you stronger,” Shmi said. “You couldn’t have saved Daddy without it.”

He hummed in agreement. “I opened myself to the dark side, the heart of it, and it gave me the power to save you both.” 

To hear him say it never failed to warm Shmi, inside and out. Even better than being important to the Force was being important to Kylo. “Do you still feel it?” she asked. “The dark side, I mean. Does it still make you stronger?”

“Of course. Your father is half of me. He’s the great love of my life,” Kylo told her, with perfect sincerity. Shmi knew that Hux would likely grimace in embarrassment if he heard that. His stuffy reserve was funny to her, because she’d always sensed that, deep down, he felt the same way about Kylo. He was anchored by his attachment to Kylo, and Shmi found it comforting—solid, like the ground beneath her feet, something she could rely on to be there forever. “You and your sister are the other two. I could do anything for your sake.” He looked at her, his eyes thoughtful and dark. “There’s no shame in loving someone. Attachments are what make us powerful. Do you understand?”

“I think so, Pa,” Shmi said, around a mouthful of bread—but she didn’t really get it, not then. That understanding wouldn’t come until she was older.

“Good.” He kissed her on the forehead, and she could feel him smiling.

 

\--

 

Shmi doesn’t join Del and Kylo in the tiny galley when it’s time for dinner, and her father doesn’t order her to, the way Hux would if he were here. Instead, she lies in her bunk, sullenly watching a holodrama on her datapad without really paying attention, the volume just loud enough to block the faint sounds coming from the galley. Her thoughts keep looping back toward the Dameron house, to the sudden madness that overcame her when Felix said those things about her father.

Genocidal maniac. It’s not like Shmi hasn’t applied those words to Hux at one time or another, in her mind or under her breath, especially in recent months. And yet, she can’t bear to hear it from someone else’s mouth—someone who doesn’t really know him. It’s confusing. She doesn’t like it.

Eventually, she gets hungry enough to venture out of the cabin, reaching out cautiously with the Force as she pads barefoot across the cold metal floors. She senses Kylo in his cabin. Good—no chance of bumping into him just now.

A pale blue light emanates from the communal space just off the galley. Edging closer, Shmi sees that Delphine is seated in the alcove where the holocomm unit is installed, facing away. She’s talking to their father. The wavering hologram shows him from the chest up, tinted blue; he’s got his hands raised where Del can see them, so he can sign for clarity as he speaks.

Shmi stays carefully out of the holocomm’s view as she slips into the galley and rummages around for a ration pack. She doesn’t want to talk to Hux, and she doubts he wants to talk to her, either.

“There’s so _many_ of them,” Delphine is saying, her voice carrying from the next room. “Who needs that many children? And everyone’s _smiling_ all the time, but it’s not real. Nobody smiles that much!”

“You’re not digging around in their heads, are you?” Hux’s tone is faintly disapproving. He’s always chiding Del about mind-reading—it’s impolite, for one thing, and it’s bound to get her in real trouble someday, if she does it to the wrong person.

“No,” Del replies, with guilty speed.

“We’ve been over this. You mustn’t use the Force as a crutch. It’s like cheating.”

“You said cheating is all right.”

“Under certain circumstances. Cheat only when you know you won’t be caught, and when it’s to your advantage to do so—never out of laziness. And besides, you don’t need these tricks to know if someone’s hiding something,” he adds. “Reading facial cues is your strong suit. We talked about micro expressions and body language, remember…”

Shmi tunes out the rest. In the background of the transmission, Millicent meows plaintively, looking for attention. Delphine had planned to bring the cat on this trip, originally, but at the last minute, she decided to leave Millicent at home. “It’s so Daddy won’t be lonely,” she’d confided to Shmi, the night before they departed. “If he can’t come with us, he shouldn’t have to be _all_ by himself. But don’t tell him I said so.”

If Hux knew Del’s reasoning, Shmi thought he would be humored by the gesture, maybe touched. But he doesn’t know, and Shmi can’t imagine telling him. It’s hard to imagine telling him anything these days.

“Go get your father, will you?” Hux asks eventually. “I want to speak to him. And don’t allow these people to get under your skin,” he adds, not unkindly. “I know they must seem strange, but you’re their guest. You must behave yourself.”

“Okay, Daddy. I’ll try,” Delphine says, and Shmi thinks of how she herself hasn’t called Hux “daddy” since she was about Del’s age. It seems like such a juvenile way to address her father. She’s outgrown it, along with many other things. “I love you.”

“Sleep well, darling. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

He doesn’t ask about Shmi. Of course not, she thinks, chewing resentfully on a ration bar. He’s punishing her—but if he thinks it’s going to work, that she’s going to crack and come begging for his forgiveness, he’s got another thing coming.

Using the Force, she mentally tracks Delphine’s path to Kylo’s cabin. Shmi considers making a break for the other cabin, which she shares with Delphine, but decides against it. Instead, she leans against the low counter and takes another bite of the ration bar. She feels Del pass the galley, heading toward the second cabin, and senses Kylo in the common area.

“She didn’t show up?” Hux asks, by way of greeting.

Kylo makes a derisive noise. “Can you believe it? All that bullshit about how important this is to her, how much she wants to see the girls, and she can’t be bothered to get here on time. Typical.”

“Maybe it’s for the best that she was delayed. That gives you some time to acclimate, before all hell breaks loose.”

“I don’t _need_ time to acclimate,” Kylo replies, in a low voice. “I’d rather just get it over with.”

“Yes, yes, like ripping off a bacta patch. All the same, when the time comes, don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

“I won’t. And I haven’t.”

“You haven’t killed anyone yet, anyway,” Hux says with a sigh. “I suppose that’s something. Aside from the obvious unpleasantness, how was it?”

A moment passes. “They were… civil,” Kylo says at last, sounding uncomfortable. “As much as you’d expect them to be. It was tense. There wasn’t a lot of chatter, and we didn’t stay long.”

“On account of the fistfight, I assume?”

“Delphine told you?”

“She can’t keep a secret to save her life. And good thing, too, because I doubt you would’ve told me on your own.”

“I didn’t want to upset you. It wasn’t a big deal.”

That makes Hux laugh humorlessly. “Oh, no, hardly worth mentioning. Our daughter just attacked her host’s son, within an hour of dropping ship. It might’ve happened to anyone.”

“She didn’t hurt him—much,” Kylo says, as if that would make it better in Hux’s view. The back of Shmi’s neck prickles with heat. “We broke it up fast.”

“So I heard. You and FN-2187, dragging your children apart at a family gathering,” Hux mutters. He pronounces Finn’s former designation crisply, sounding more disbelieving than disdainful. “What a spectacle that must’ve been. Why did she do it?”

“Defending your honor, as I understand it.”

“Kriff,” Hux says, and Shmi blinks in surprise at hearing him speak so roughly. He rarely curses like that, though it has less to do with manners and more to do with a dislike of crude, imprecise language. “Was she really?”

“That’s what she told me—though not in those words. I don’t know what that Dameron kid said to her, but it was enough.”

For a moment, Hux doesn’t reply. Shmi can’t imagine the look on his face right now: disappointed, or angry, or something else. “Tell her never to do that again,” he says at last. “It’s not worth the trouble. And besides, it’s unbecoming.”

“Hux…”

“Just tell her.” 

Quietly, Kylo says, “I know this has been difficult. You’re not used to being away from them.”

“And what would you know about it? You’ve never had one of them taken from you,” Hux replies, his voice sharp. Then he sighs, a rush of static in the spotty connection. “I keep thinking I should’ve gone.”

“It was your choice to stay. You said—”

“I know what I said. If I were there, it would be a disaster. They can tolerate you, at least for a few days, but never me. And I suppose that’s as it should be, but it still feels wrong.”

“I’m taking care of the girls,” Kylo reminds him. “They’re completely safe.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“I know.” Kylo’s voice is as gentle as Shmi has ever heard it—gentle, and oddly sad. “It’ll be over soon.”

“No, it won’t,” Hux tells him, bitterly. “It’s never going to end. She’s got her hooks in now. This is just what she always wanted, and we stumbled right into it. I thought I could—” He sucks in a breath, then releases it slowly. “I don’t know what I thought. It doesn’t matter now.”

Half a minute passes in silence; the only sound is the low, skittering hum of the overhead light in the galley.

“You look tired,” Kylo says eventually, and Shmi pictures him in her mind’s eye: slouched in front of the holocomm, studying Hux’s projection.

Somewhat grudgingly, Hux admits, “I haven’t been sleeping all that well.”

“You can’t sleep without me?” There’s a smile in Kylo’s voice.

“I haven’t had to in almost twenty years, have I?” Hux says defensively. “I’m just used to you. And you keep the bed very warm.”

Kylo laughs quietly. “I miss you, too. You should go back to bed.”

“I’d just have to get up again in an hour.”

“It’s morning there?”

“Just about.”

“I’ll call at a better time tomorrow.”

“No need,” Hux replies, and Shmi can picture the slight shake of his head. “Call when you can. The time doesn’t matter.”

“If you say so.” Kylo pauses a moment, like he’s considering something. “It’s only a few more days. I’ll bring the girls home soon.”

“You’d better,” Hux sounds exhausted.

There’s a quiet click as the connection is severed. Kylo’s boots tap the floor as he gets up and approaches the galley. Shmi is stuck: She can’t slip away without crossing paths with him, so she just stands her ground and tries not to look too embarrassed when he leans in the narrow doorway and gives her a knowing look.

“What does your dad say about eavesdropping?” 

“It’s a good tactic, if you don’t get caught,” Shmi mumbles.

Kylo huffs. Then he reaches out and squeezes her shoulder, affectionately. “Go to bed, princess.”

 

\--

 

By the time Shmi climbs into her bunk, most activity around the port has died down, except for the distant rumble of engines and the echoing clamor of cargo being loaded and unloaded. Lying on the top bunk, she misses the rushing rain that usually puts her to sleep. Below her, she can hear Delphine breathing, quiet and steady.

Shmi remembers falling asleep in her parents’ bed as a small child, before Delphine came along. She used to wake drowsy and warm in the space between them, surrounded by the whooshing rain. Someone was always holding her. Half-asleep, she couldn’t always tell whose arm was slung across her, whether it belonged to Kylo or Hux. It didn’t really matter. The feeling of contentment was the same. Back then, their home was the whole galaxy to her.

She never really thought she’d leave Pacifica 9.

And yet, here she is. Some of the people here for Life Day, including Poe Dameron and Leia, knew her father before he was Kylo Ren, and they’re soft for him even now. At least, they’re soft for the memory of him as he once was, all those years ago, and for what he might’ve been.

Kylo says that Poe and Leia see him as having been corrupted by his old master, in many ways a victim of circumstance, and that’s why they can try to look past the things he’s done. It’s a kind of willful blindness. The others, like Rey and Finn, go along with it as much as they can, for the sake of their loved ones.

Whenever Shmi asked about his past, Kylo has always been transparent with her: He was manipulated and molded by Snoke, as far back as he can remember. Snoke’s presence in the Force, in Kylo’s mind, made him a constant companion; when Kylo felt that all others had turned away from him, recoiling in fear and disgust, Snoke was there. He kept turning inward, to the voice that had always been with him.

It didn’t occur to him until many years later that Snoke’s endless whispers and insinuations were meant to isolate him from everyone else, that it had all gone exactly the way Snoke planned. 

Without Snoke, Kylo’s life would’ve been very different. He says he has regrets—but to this day, he swears that he’s happier to live with his family on their little moon than he could’ve been anywhere in the New Republic. Shmi chooses to believe him. 

Meanwhile, Hux is a different story. There’s no goodwill to extend to him, no faint fondness remembered from decades ago. Nobody can forget who he is and what he’s done, not for Shmi and Del’s sake, not even for Leia’s. 

Shmi still remembers seeing her father’s face on the holonews for the first time. It was some segment looking back on the Starkiller attack, which at that time was merely a word to her, not part of her heritage. While she recognized Hux immediately, he also looked like someone she’d never met: young and sharp-eyed and clean-shaven. Something inside of her recoiled from this bizarre vision of her father. It didn’t make any sense. 

That was the first time Hux explained it to her, in the simplest possible terms. His voice was calm and measured—she realizes now that he’d been preparing his words for years in advance—but there was something sad and uneasy in his eyes. Shmi was eight at the time, and it didn’t fully register with her. It was just a story about something bad that happened a long time ago. Only as she grew up did it sink in.

She knows why Hux can never be welcome among these people. At this point, she’s not sure if Delphine is really too young to grasp it, or if she understands and is pretending not to. Del can be annoyingly perceptive for a kid, always smug about knowing things that other people don’t, but she adores Hux. She wouldn’t admit that he’s a murderer.

Shmi wonders if the suspicion surrounding Hux applies to her, too—if she’s considered tainted by Hux’s blood. It disquiets her to think that her extended family and their friends might only accept her as long as she makes it easy for them to pretend she’s not her father’s daughter. Most likely, the only way she’ll get through the rest of this week is if she and everyone else pretends that Hux doesn’t exist. Despite the turmoil of recent weeks and months, she’s not sure if she can manage that, or if she really wants to.

But that’s a problem that can only face one day at a time, beginning tomorrow. Shmi pulls the sheet tighter around herself, focuses on the push-pull of her sister’s breathing, and wills herself to sleep.

 

\--

 

After the war, Armitage Hux was a fairly popular subject for documentaries. Shmi discovered this around age fourteen, when she began cautiously dipping into the HoloNet for more information about her family history. She delved a little deeper each time, gradually using bolder search terms and seeking sources farther and farther removed from what she’d been told by her parents.

Most of the holodocs Shmi had found so far portrayed Hux in a harsh and unsympathetic light, more monster than man. Others were more nuanced, but that approach was somewhat controversial; no one wanted to be accused of romanticizing the Starkiller. It was hard to stomach the more critical docs. Shmi had to shut them off sometimes—unable to listen to people talk about her father that way, unable to face the things he’d done—and then berated herself for being a coward.

The research was her little secret, something she did when no one else was around—right up until Hux caught her. She’d thought she was alone in the apartment, so focused on the holo projected on her datapad that she’d tuned out the familiar, Hux-shaped impression in the Force until he was standing over her bed.

“Shmi—” Hux’s voice made her jump. “What are you watching?”

As she yanked the headphones off, Shmi slapped the power button on her datapad, killing the holovid—but it was too late. One look at Hux’s face, and she knew he’d seen it: the image of his own face, decades old, projected onto the screen. He could guess what she’d been watching; he was only asking to force her to own up to it.

“Nothing,” she said evasively, in a small voice, scrambling to sit up.

“Then why are you hiding it from me?” There was a crease between his eyebrows, and she couldn’t tell if he was worried or mad. “If there’s something you’re curious about—if you think there’s something I haven’t told you—”

“It’s just a holovid—”

“I don’t want you to feel as if you have to keep secrets,” Hux said disapprovingly.

“But it’s not a secret,” she insisted, her face hot. “It’s just… private.”

He paused for a moment, studying her. “All the same, if you have questions, you know I’d prefer to you ask me directly, rather than go trawling around on the HoloNet. There’s no context. Most of those people don’t know what they’re talking about, or what it was like.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Shmi said dully. She felt embarrassed and defeated all at once. Part of her knew that she had no reason to feel guilty—she hadn’t broken any rules—but she was sure that Hux was disappointed in her, that she’d failed him somehow. “I won’t watch them anymore.”

“No, no—that’s not what I meant,” he said, shaking his head. He looked slightly pained. “It’s good that you’re doing independent research, I suppose. Thinking for yourself. But we ought to discuss it, don’t you think?” With a sigh, Hux sat on the bed beside her. He left a gap between them, like he wanted to give her a little space. “Did you learn anything new?”

For a second, she just stared at him. “What?”

“I’d like to correct any factual errors, if possible,” he said, and that sounded more like him, enough to convince Shmi it wasn’t a trick question.

“Oh.” She squeezed her hands together in her lap, not quite looking at Hux. Her parents had always told her that she could ask them anything, and she appreciated that. But the older she got, the harder it became to talk about the past. It was no different now. “This one had some new pictures of—your father,” she said delicately. “He looks like you. Or you look like him.”

“There was something of a resemblance between us, yes,” Hux acknowledged.

“And he looks a little like Delphine, too.”

“You think so?” He sounded slightly disquieted by that.

“Yeah.” From certain angles, anyway, especially around the mouth and nose. It was strange. She didn’t really think of Brendol as her grandfather—there was too much of a disconnect between them, since Hux so rarely spoke of him. Sometimes it was hard to imagine Hux has having a father at all; he always seemed self-contained to Shmi, like he’d created himself. All the holodocs discussed Brendol at length, though,  speculating on the influence he might’ve had on his son. “And, uh—it talked about your mother, a little bit. Or, you know, the person they think might’ve been her.”

The identity of Hux’s mother had never been confirmed. She wasn’t Brendol’s wife—that much was known. Allegedly, she worked in the kitchen of the Hux household, on Arkanis. Based on old registries, a few reporters found a likely candidate: a human woman named Sophie Panza. She worked as a technician, maintaining the droids that did the household upkeep. Her employment dates checked out. She would’ve been seventeen when Hux was born; the commandant was pushing fifty at the time.

“Well, I can’t tell you if that part’s accurate or not,” Hux said at last. There was a tension in his voice that wasn’t there before. He never seemed to like it when Shmi or Delphine asked about his mother. “I have no memory of her.”

“I know. It’s okay—it doesn’t matter.” Shmi wondered if he’d ever seen the grainy holophoto pulled from the employment record, if it would stir something in the recesses of his mind. Maybe she was reading into things, but she thought the young woman in the picture looked a bit like her father, especially around the eyes. Not that it could ever be proved. No one had managed to locate Sophie, in all these years. Most likely, she was dead. “There was some stuff about Rae Sloane,” she added, hoping he would take the bait. “There usually is.”

“Usually?” Hux raised his eyebrows. “How many of these have you seen?”

“Just a couple,” she said, a blatant lie. She wondered if he’d already guessed that she’d seen more than a dozen. “But they all talk about how she was—you know, important to you. And the other way around.” As far back as Shmi could remember, Hux had been more inclined to share stories about Rae Sloane than about his own father. He was attached to her even now, more than he’d like to admit; Shmi could sense it. “She took a special interest in you, or something.”

A thoughtful look crossed his face. “I considered naming you Sloane, you know, for a little while.”

Shmi looked up in surprise. “You never told me that! How come you let Pa name me instead?”

“Well, he badgered me into it.”

“Do you think she would’ve been happy, if you’d named me after her?” 

“Oh, I couldn’t say. She would’ve been humored, perhaps. She would’ve thought me overly sentimental.”

“You are,” Shmi felt compelled to point out. His nose wrinkled in distaste. “Well, you can be.”

He looked unconvinced. Then he cleared his throat. “Do you have any other questions?” he asked, somewhat awkwardly. “About anything?” 

“Well… ” Shmi ran her tongue over her teeth, considering. Hesitantly, she asked, “How come you never told me you had another name?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you were little, before you went to the academy—they said you had a different name.” The holodocs also claimed that Hux had been raised as a girl for part of his childhood before he transitioned to male, which was baffling. Shmi couldn’t quite wrap her head around the idea of someone mistaking her father for anything but a man. It seemed obvious to her, through the Force. But Hux said that humans could be funny about gender. They got it wrong sometimes.

A second passed, and then Hux’s eyebrows arched. “My birth name? Is that what you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Ah. Well. It’s a bit like…” He paused, a considering look on his face. “You know that your father was called something other than Kylo Ren when he was young. He chose a new name for himself, one that suited him better, one that made it clear who he was. He hasn’t answered to his birth name since he was a child.”

Shmi nodded. She knew her father’s old name, though she’d only ever heard him speak it aloud once, when he shared it with her. That made an intrinsic sort of sense to Shmi: In her mind, Kylo had taken on a new name as part of an almost magical transformation process, when he joined the Knights of Ren. Some scholars suggested that order was older than the Jedi. Of course he couldn’t use his old name; it would profane his sacred title.

“So you understand,” Hux said now. “As for my old name, it belonged to someone who doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe that person never really existed in the first place. It wasn’t my real name, that’s for certain. I never told you about it because it doesn’t matter anymore. And I’d prefer that you don’t use it.”

“I won’t,” Shmi promised, and he seemed pleased to hear it, though she sensed a lingering apprehension. Maybe he was worried about what else she might’ve heard about him on the HoloNet, wondering if she would ask him about it.

She didn’t press for more details that night. But she sensed that something had shifted slightly between them, when Hux realized that she knew more about his past than what he’d revealed to her.

Looking back, it was hard for Shmi to remember a time before she knew about Starkiller. Her parents had hinted at it since she was small, and Hux laid it out in simple terms once she was old enough to ask. Starkiller, he’d said, was a weapon that the First Order used a long time ago. That was easy enough to understand.

As time passed, he fed her more details, bit by bit, never more than he thought she could swallow: The weapon was powerful enough to destroy an entire system. Hux gave the order to fire it, and Kylo watched the red beams streak across the stars from the safety of the _Finalizer_. More than that, Hux _designed_ the weapon. It came from his mind and his hands. He would’ve fired it a second time, if it wasn’t destroyed at the last moment.

Starkiller did exactly what it was meant to do, and yet it did not win the war. Hux gave the order to end billions of lives, but he had nothing to show for it. That was what he impressed upon her, from the beginning: In the end, it was all a waste. She didn’t think he regretted Starkiller, not exactly, but he never seemed proud of it, either. More than anything, he seemed weary.

Because Shmi had never lived in a galaxy where the Hosnian System existed, it wasn’t quite real to her. Sometimes it seemed like an imaginary place that she only heard about on the holonews, or in her father’s stories. Maybe that was a moral failing on her part, but for a long time, it was hard for her to grasp the loss of something so distant, a time and place that she could never touch.

The best way to understand the past, Shmi decided, was to get answers on her own. While her parents were always honest with her, they were biased. Hux answered her questions, but never offered any information beyond what she asked, never elaborated unless prompted. Kylo was a little more forthcoming, but she was only getting one side of the story.

And so she began to research Starkiller on her own—privately, on her datapad while Delphine was asleep, or while her parents were out of the house. Starkiller was not a forbidden word in their home, but she got the sense that neither Kylo nor Hux would be glad to know that she was rooting around on the HoloNet for information about the two of them.

The information was readily available, mountains of it: holonews reports, post-war documentaries, personal accounts, conspiracy theories, leaked and declassified documents. There was almost too much to sort through. The sheer volume was overwhelming. Shmi didn’t know where to begin.

She was struck by the constant comparisons to Alderaan. The scale of the disaster was bigger, of course, but Leia Organa and her fellow Alderaanian refugees were the only living beings who could come close to truly understanding the loss of the Hosnian System. When the war ended, Leia had a great deal to say on the subject. She appeared in holos to speak about grief and anger, about the preservation of cultures, about justice and healing.

“Never again,” she promised, and her voice was so clear and strong that it was easy to believe her, easy to imagine the future bending to her will. But in her eyes, Shmi thought she saw something else: an unspeakable pain, and something like bitterness.

Leia had made the same promises in the wake of the civil war, after Alderaan: “Never again,” she’d told the galaxy, and yet she stood before them again decades later, speaking eloquently and passionately about an even greater genocide.

Kylo once told Shmi that he’d never lived in a galaxy where Alderaan existed, and yet he spent his childhood mourning it. To him, Alderaan often felt like something out of a fable, a long-gone world where he would’ve been a prince. It was hard to grieve for something he’d never really known. But when he was young, he observed the holy days with Leia, and planted trees in the Alderaanian colonies, and listened to refugees tell him stories of a world he would never see.

Some of them clasped his hands like he would disappear if they let go. Some of them wept. He was supposed to be the hope for their future, once upon a time. Even back then, Kylo said, he’d known that he wasn’t enough for them, and he never would be. The dreams of a lost world were too heavy for any one person to bear.

Shmi wondered sometimes, a bit guiltily, how Kylo could love someone like Hux, considering how he grew up. But her father’s relationship with his mother’s homeworld was as complicated as his relationship with Leia herself. He refused to speak to her, and yet Shmi and Delphine wore the braids that Leia had taught him.

There was plenty of footage from the moments leading up to the Starkiller attack, easily found. Shmi watched as many clips as she could stand: clips from live news broadcasts, which happened to be streaming at the time; recorded holocalls between people in the Hosnian System and their loved ones in other parts of the galaxy. It was all perfectly normal, until the red light appeared in the sky.

In most holos, there was chaos, people panicked and scrambling. No one knew what was happening, though something inside them recognized the danger on a primal level. Some people screamed as the light burned hotter and brighter. Others went silent, as though stunned. The holos all ended the same way: That terrible red beam came down like her father’s lightsaber, all-consuming, and then the footage cut out.

After that—nothing.

Shmi watched footage from the rally, too, the speech General Hux gave on Starkiller Base, immediately before the weapon fired. It was recorded to be used in propaganda later on, but it was leaked—uncovered by a slicer, probably—before the end of the war and made the rounds on all the news broadcasts.

By now, Shmi had probably seen the speech a hundred times. She struggled to reconcile the frightening man in that holo with the man who taught her to read and write, who kissed her on the head and called her “darling.” How could they be the same person? How could he have raised her so lovingly when he had murdered billions in cold blood?

She knew his reasons, of course. He’d explained them to her, more than once, his words as rhythmic and carefully-selected as a bedtime story. Destroying the Hosnian System was a strategic move, meant to end the war in a single strike. It made logical sense, when she tried to put herself in Hux’s place.

But every time she watched that red light come down from the sky, she couldn’t help but think of how the man who made that weapon also made her.

 

\--

 

“It’s too early,” Shmi complains, burying her face in the squashed pillow, when her dad attempts to get her out of bed. Bleary, she feels as if she barely slept.

“That’s just the lag,” Kylo tells her. “The nights here are shorter than back home, and the days are longer. Gravity’s a little heavier, too. Your body hasn’t adjusted yet.”

“Fascinating.” Stifling a yawn, she rolls over, her back to him. Then she squawks when Kylo uses the Force to lift her three inches off the bed, then drop her back onto the mattress. She bounces a little. “Pa!”

“Up,” he says. “Time for breakfast.”

Shmi stays where she is for a moment longer, on basic principle. She doesn’t want him to levitate her all the way off the bunk, though—he’s done it before—so she hauls herself out of bed and into the cramped refresher. The sonic shower removes any traces of dirt or sweat from her skin and hair, but it can’t compare to bathing with real water. At least her hair doesn’t get wet; it’s waist-length and thick, which means it takes forever to dry. She ties her hair back into a loose, lazy braid, just to keep it out of the way.

In the common area, Kylo and Delphine are eating breakfast rations on the lounge seat: simple, functional, mostly tasteless food. He tosses Shmi a package as she drops onto the far end of the lounge seat, which she catches with the Force. Delphine, she notices, is already dressed for the day, her hair pinned up in a glossy black coil that Kylo probably helped her with. He enjoys doing her hair, especially since Shmi doesn’t bother with the braids much anymore.

For a few minutes, they eat together in comfortable silence. Then all three of them look up at the same time, sensing a shimmer in the Force outside. Someone’s here. “Pa,” Shmi says. 

“I know,” he assures her, and slides out of his seat to open the hatch. It slides open to reveal Clauda Dameron, the pretty Togruta, standing with her hands clasped in front of her. Rey stands at her side. “What do you want?” 

“Good morning to you, too,” Rey tells him, in a bored tone. “We’re doing quite well, thanks for asking.”

Clauda smiles pleasantly, but Shmi can sense a faint undercurrent of anxiety. She’s a little scared of Kylo. Maybe that’s why Rey is with her—moral support, or something. “I came for Shmi and Delphine, actually. I thought maybe we could walk around the market, and head up to the house for lunch. If that’s all right,” Clauda adds, looking cautiously at Kylo, and then past him, to where Shmi and Delphine are seated in the common area.

“And in the meantime, maybe you and I can catch up,” Rey says to Kylo.

Shmi’s mouth is open, ready to blurt some excuse for why she can’t go, but Delphine is already using the Force to collect her boots from the other side of the room. While she bounces up out of her seat, Shmi and Kylo exchange a brief, dire look. He doesn’t want to be alone with Rey any more than Shmi wants to be alone with Clauda—but Delphine would be so disappointed, and that matters more. She shrugs, the tiniest tilt of her shoulders, and he nods. They both silently accept their fate.

Ten minutes later, as Shmi walks away from the shuttle with Delphine and Clauda, she can’t help but feel like she’s being tricked somehow.

“So, um—about yesterday,” she begins, awkwardly. “I, uh—”

Clauda waves her words away. “We already talked about it,” she says breezily. “You know, emergency family meeting. And we decided that you shouldn’t have hit him, but he shouldn’t have said all that stuff to you, so it almost cancels out. Today’s supposed to be a fresh start.”

“Is Felix okay?” Shmi can’t forget how hard she hit him, over and over. In that moment, blood roaring in her ears, it was like something awful suddenly came to life inside her—except, not really. It lived inside her all the time. Yesterday, she’d just let it out. She won’t allow that to happen again, not here.

“Yeah, he’s all right. A little jumpy, but nothing’s broken. And between you and me,” Clauda adds, glancing at her sidelong, “I think he learned a valuable lesson. Talk shit, get hit. Rey used to tell us that all the time—I guess that was how it worked on Jakku. Anyway, past is past. That’s the whole point of you coming here, right?”

“Right,” Shmi hears herself say. She hadn’t thought of it that way, but she supposes that _is_ the point of their visit: to put the whole messy history behind them, at least for a weekend. As she turns the idea over in her mind, she feels a strange, inarticulate discomfort.

Beyond the port is a sprawling outdoor marketplace, a maze of stalls and colorful tents, choked with crowds even at this early hour. Clauda directs them skillfully through the throng, pointing out the more interesting installations, calling out greetings to the shopkeepers she apparently knows. Huge conifer trees stand here and there, decorated all over with strings of lights and garlands that sparkle faintly in the sun. The trees are obviously artificial, but kind of impressive to look at all the same. Shmi supposes they’ll look even prettier at night, with the lights on.

Many of the tents they pass are decorated for Life Day, too. Tinny music pipes from hidden speakers—Life Day carols. Shmi recognizes some from her HoloNet research. She can’t make heads or tails of the music, though, since all the traditional songs are in Shyriiwook. Her dad speaks the language, she knows, but he never taught her.

Naturally, Delphine is attracted to a stall selling the tackiest souvenirs Shmi has ever seen. Some items are emblazoned with Life Day sentiments; others commemorate the destruction of the first Death Star, which was apparently visible from this moon. It’s incongruous.

After rummaging through the wares, Shmi eventually picks up a hideous sweater with some kind of nonsense phrase stitched across the front and holds it up triumphantly. The writing is in Shyriiwook.

“That’s way too big for you,” Shmi points out.

“It’s for Dad,” Delphine replies. “We have to bring him a souvenir.”

Shmi opens her mouth to say that Hux won’t like the sweater—but, well, it’s the thought that counts. At least Delphine didn’t choose one of the holocards that show an animated exploding Death Star, along with the words: _Greetings from Yavin IV!_

Suppressing a sigh, she digs in her pocket for the rest of the money Kylo gave her yesterday and hands it over to the Rodian man running the stall. As the three of them meander away, Delphine looks pleased with her purchase.

“So you’ve never celebrated Life Day before?” Clauda asks eventually, having noticed Shmi and Delphine goggling at the activity around them.

“No,” Shmi replies. “There aren’t any Wookiees where we’re from. And we don’t really do holidays. Our family, I mean.”

Clauda half smiles, like she thinks Shmi is joking, but the smile fades when she realizes that isn’t the case. “None at all?”

“Well, no. But it’s not—” Shmi feels her neck getting hot. “It’s not _weird_ or anything. Holidays are optional.”

That’s what her parents have always said, and it makes sense to Shmi, more or less. She’s seen and participated in a plethora of holidays over the years, observed by their friends and neighbors back home, who come from a diverse range of species and cultures. But while it can be fun to take part, she doesn’t feel a personal connection to the activities.

As Shmi understands it, her parents were forced to celebrate a number of tedious holidays when they were growing up. Hux suffered through his share of mandatory rallies to commemorate the rise of the Galactic Empire, as well as those lamenting its fall. Meanwhile, Kylo endured a wide array of Alderaanian holy days, including a special yearly observance to mourn its destruction. And, of course, there was also Life Day. Apparently, the two of them decided not to foist those traditions upon their daughters.

“What about birthdays?” Clauda presses. “Tell me you do birthdays.”

“Of course we do,” Shmi says with a frown. She doesn’t want Clauda thinking that she comes from a family of heathens who never celebrate anything. On birthdays, there’s cake and a gift, maybe a special outing. When Shmi was younger, Kylo always let her see his lightsaber on her birthday, even hold it when she was big enough to be trusted not to slice her own head off. “We just—we have our own things that we do. That’s all.”

“Well, you’re in for a treat no matter what. Life Day is the best.” Clauda nudges Delphine. “Do you like fireworks?”

Delphine’s eyes practically sparkle.

 

\--

 

It was a cold, wet day, but when Shmi crept into her parents’ bedroom, the enclosed space was humid. That was how Hux preferred it lately; no matter the actual temperature, he was constantly shivering. Only a tiny amount of light slipped around the dark curtains, making it hard to see, but she didn’t dare switch on the lamp.

From across the room, she heard Hux’s labored breathing. The sound was still upsetting to her, in a visceral way. In the low light, she could make out his silhouette on the bed: unconscious, beneath a heap of blankets, despite the heat. She padded silently toward the bed.

Almost three weeks ago, Shmi, Delphine and Hux all came down with an unfamiliar strain of flu. There was no telling where it came from—a customer from off-world, a stranger in the market—or which of them had inadvertently picked it up and brought it home.

Shmi and Delphine bounced back quickly. It had something to do with the Force, which acted as a kind of secondary immune system, or so Kylo claimed. And besides, they were young and vigorous; Shmi was only thirteen at the time. Hux, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. His health took a nosedive. He’d been bedridden for two weeks now, frail and feverish, with an awful, wet-sounding cough that had settled deep in his chest.

Despite being a medidroid, Obie wasn’t much help. Her programming was centered around midwifery, childcare, and basic emergency medicine. Shmi helped the droid tend to Hux during the day, because Kylo was busy in the garage. In the early stages of the illness, he had wanted to close up until Hux was well, but Hux gave him an earful, arguing that Kylo’s mere presence during business hours wouldn’t miraculously improve his condition. In the end, it was easier to just do what Hux said. It was usually was.

Hux wasn’t hard to look after. He slept through most of the day, though it wasn’t restful. Sometimes he woke himself up coughing, and Obie would pester him to drink water, or Shmi would replace the cool cloth wrapped around his neck, meant to keep the fever from cooking his brain. Other times, Shmi just sat with him in silence, watching him fretfully while he slept. There were moments when he didn’t seem to recognize her, when he was confused and didn’t know where he was. That was more frightening to Shmi than anything else.

“Dad,” she whispered now, touching his shoulder. She nudged him gently. “Dad, Obie says you have to eat.”

Her touch made him jerk in his sleep, like he’d been shocked. Then, with effort, he blinked into semiconsciousness. When he looked up at her, his eyes were bleary and bloodshot. It took him a moment to focus on her face. “Where is the admiral?”

Shmi hesitated. She had been hoping he would be lucid. “Who?”

“Admiral Sloane,” he said, more urgently. His voice was a rasp, throat raw from coughing. “Has her ship been found yet?”

“I…” Shmi didn’t know what to say. He’d told her all about Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, the Imperial who had mentored him. As she understood it, Sloane disappeared many years ago, when Hux was a young man, on a mission that took her to Wild Space. He never found out what happened to her. And though he’d never said so, Shmi could tell that it still pained him—the not knowing. Maybe he’d been dreaming of her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

A dark expression clouded his face for a moment. Then he nodded vaguely, looking unhappy. “Monitor all incoming transmissions. If there’s any word, I expect to be informed.”

“Of course,” she said slowly, disquieted.

Before long, he fell back into a restless sleep. The next time he woke, he didn’t say anything about Sloane.

Late that night, through the wall that separated their bedrooms, Shmi could hear Hux arguing hoarsely with Kylo, who wanted to take him to the tiny medcenter. Hux refused, on the grounds that it would compromise their anonymity. Shmi saw his logic: A blood test or retinal scan would undoubtedly trigger a match in a criminal database, and that would be the end of their lives here.

But if Hux died, their lives here would be over, too.

Had he deteriorated much more, Kylo probably would’ve take him to the medcenter against his wishes. There would’ve been nothing Hux could do about it, weak as he was. And maybe Hux would never have forgiven Kylo for taking such a risk—but Shmi would, in a heartbeat.

Ultimately, it didn’t come to that. Hux plateaued: His fever broke, and he gradually began to recover. It was a few weeks before he was well enough to resume all his usual work in the garage. Even then, the cough persisted for months, a rattling wheeze that came from deep in his chest. No matter how Kylo pestered him, Hux refused to visit the medcenter to get his respiratory system checked out.

For a long time after that illness, Shmi was desperately afraid that he would get sick again. Anything could happen to him—a stroke or a heart attack, or cancer, or another bout of sickness from which he wouldn’t recover. It was terrifyingly plausible. Despite all the contingency plans that had been drilled into her, the danger of losing one or both of her fathers had never seemed quite real to her, on their isolated little moon. Nothing could have prepared her to actually face her parents’ mortality, to come so close to disaster.

Someday, when Kylo passed, Shmi knew that she would be able to find him in the Force. He’d be there, in one form or another, surrounding her. The thought was comforting. But when Hux died, she would never see him again, never speak to him, never feel his presence. He would just be gone, forever. And then what would she do?

Shmi knew the plan if the New Republic took Hux from her—where to go, who to contact, how to survive. In that situation, her actions would be automatic, predetermined. She would be so busy running from their enemies that she would have little time to dwell on her own feelings of loss, except perhaps in the quiet hours of the night. For the first time, she realized that no matter how thoroughly her parents had planned, there was simply no blueprint for how to cope emotionally.

Confronted with the reality that she would someday have to live without Kylo and Hux, she didn’t think she was strong enough. She just hoped it would be a long, long time before she had to find out.

 

\--

 

They spend so much time trailing Delphine from stall to stall that they miss lunch. Clauda says that Poe cooks meals at a very specific time each day; there’s no chance of a meal being served earlier or later than expected. Apparently, when you have seven children, a regular schedule is key to survival.

“Why are there so many of you, anyway?” Delphine asks, while they’re waiting in line at a food cart.

Shmi blanches at the intrusive question—for someone who brags about sensing emotions, Delphine can be embarrassingly blunt sometimes—but Clauda laughs. “Some people collect stray pets,” she says. “My dads collect stray kids. They never met an orphan they didn’t want to take home.”

When they finally make it back to the Dameron house—Delphine’s pockets full of additional knickknacks that will probably end up in a drawer at home—Clauda walks Delphine around the back of the house to show her the garden. Shmi, however, ventures inside the house alone. As anxious as she is about seeing Felix again, she needs to apologize to him.

In the kitchen, she comes upon Poe, packing away leftovers into plastoid containers. Dirty dishes are stacked around the sink. He notices her before she has a chance to speak, and gestures toward a platter on the table. “Want any before I put it up?”

Shmi glances over. Her eyes widen when she recognizes the plaintain wrapping. “Pasteles?” she asks, surprised to see them here, so far from home. Her father cooks these sometimes, when he’s in a certain mood.

Poe laughs—not a mean laugh, exactly, but it rankles Shmi just the same. “No, they’re tamales.” A moment later, he notices her pinched expression and clarifies: “I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just—well, I knew your dad when he was a kid. Spent a summer at your grandmother’s place, even. Did he ever tell you that?”

“He’s mentioned it.” Kylo’s told her other things about Poe, as well, like what happened on board the _Finalizer_ all those years ago. She thinks of it now—of how ashamed her father had seemed, and how regretful—and feels suddenly lost.

“The first time I cooked him tamales, he said the same thing you did just now. I haven’t thought of that in a long time. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Shmi says, unsure of how she ought to respond. A few old pictures of Ben Solo are still floating around on the HoloNet, and Shmi would be lying if she said she hadn’t looked at them—rather, scrutinized them, hungry for traces of her own features, for some clue that will tell her more about herself—but she can’t call up the details just now. It’s hard to imagine her father as ever having been someone else. “So, about yesterday,” she goes on, awkwardly. Whatever Clauda said earlier, she can’t just ignore it. “I shouldn’t have—”

Poe raises one hand, stalling her words. “Listen—”

“I was a guest in your home,” she persists, forcing herself to look at him. “And what I did was completely out of line. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“You’d probably be better off telling that to Felix. But I appreciate hearing it.”

“Is he around?”

“Around the back somewhere, I think. Just a tip—don’t make any sudden movements when you talk to him, okay? He’ll be a little twitchy around you.” Poe smiles faintly, in a way that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners, as if to take the sting out of it. Then he nods toward the platter again. “You sure you’re not hungry? I mean, they’re not pasteles, but they’re good.”

Another moment of hesitation, and then Shmi accepts. She takes a seat at the scarred wooden table and Poe joins her, portioning out some food for each of them. Shmi’s first bite is cautiously polite, but the second is more enthusiastic. Tamales, it turns out, are delicious.

As a child, she could never have imagined doing something like this, eating tamales with Poe Dameron—and yet, she’s here. It all feels so strange, but not unpleasant. Not yet, anyway. But the day is young; she has plenty of time left to ruin things, she thinks grimly.

“You’re the spitting image of your dad,” Poe says. His tone is light and conversational, but there’s another layer to it, one that Shmi can just barely sense through the Force: something bitter, something sad. “Anyone ever tell you that? It’s kind of spooky.”

“Which one?” Shmi asks, pointedly, though she knows who he means. She takes after Kylo: dark-haired and dark-eyed, broad shoulders and big ears. There’s almost nothing at all of Hux in her face. Delphine’s the one who got his eyes, sharp blue, but that’s about it. Everything they inherited from Hux is on the inside.

Poe doesn’t miss a beat. “Kylo,” he says. “Should’ve been more clear. The double-dad thing gets confusing around here, too.” He smiles a little, disarming, and then pauses. “So I heard you like to fly.”

“Not really,” Shmi says, around a mouthful of food. “I mean, I do, but I haven’t actually done it much. More speeders than ships. Simulations, you know—I have a holoset at home.”

He hums thoughtfully. “You know, my mom’s old A-wing is in good shape. I could take you up sometime, before you go home.”

Shmi looks up. “Really?”

“Sure, if you want.”

“In an A-wing?”

“I mean, she’s not the flashiest ship around, but she’s got some fight left in her.”

“That would be—” Shmi’s heart is beating embarrassingly fast, just at the thought. She never thought she’d see an A-wing in person, much less fly in one. It’s a classic model. “I would love that.”

Poe smiles. “That’s what I like to hear,” he says. “You let me know when, and I’ll make it happen.”

When they’re done, she helps Poe put away the leftovers, and then makes her way outside. Behind the house, all seven Dameron children are crowded around one of the picnic tables arranged in the patchy shade, loudly heckling the people seated there. They’re all talking over each other, laughing.

Felix is among them, Shmi can’t help but notice. He doesn’t look any worse for the wear; he must’ve gotten bacta patches for his bruises. It’s a small relief. All the same, when he makes eye contact with Shmi, his expression sours. She looks away quickly, abashed, unsure of how she’d ever thought she could face him again, in front of other people. Some dark-side Force user she turned out to be—real tough.

Delphine is seated at the picnic table, playing sabacc. Across from her is a human man with smooth brown skin and curling dark hair, shot through with silver. He’s so unexpected, so completely out of context, that Shmi doesn’t recognize him right away. Then it clicks.

As Delphine draws the Idiot card, the Damerons let out a collective groan. “She’s cheating,” Gallim says, shaking his head. “I don’t know how, but she is.” 

“It’s the will of the Force,” Delphine says dismissively, without looking up from her hand. “I get the cards it wants to give me. Also, I can hear your thoughts.”

Gallim immediately clams up.

“You’re pretty confident for a kid,” the old man comments.

Delphine shrugs. “My dad taught me to play sabacc,” she says, with a _so-there_ heavily implied. In fact, Kylo is known around the local cantina for his uncanny sabacc skill. Most of the cantina regulars won’t play against him anymore, except for low stakes.

“And who do you think taught him?” The man smiles across the table at Delphine, then lays out his hand: pure sabacc. “I didn’t show him everything, either.”

If Shmi had been asked to imagine the circumstances under which she might meet Lando Calrissian, this really wouldn’t have been what she pictured.

 

\--

 

Shmi buckled her helmet, then allowed Kylo to double-check that the strap was tight enough. “Well?” she asked, resisting the urge to bounce on the balls of her feet. “Can I go now?” 

“You sure you’re ready?” Kylo asked. “Maybe we should do another safety check.”

“Pa,” Shmi complained, flat and drawn-out, which made him smile.

It was misting rain as the two of them stood in the large duracrete lot behind the garage. They didn’t use it for much, except for the odd leisurely test drive when repairs on some vehicle had been completed. Kylo usually preferred to take a client’s speeder out onto the street and put it through its paces, which Hux frowned upon, for liability reasons—not that it ever stopped Kylo. Today, though, Kylo said the lot was a perfect place for Shmi to pilot a speeder by herself for the first time. At thirteen, he said it was past time that she learned.

When Shmi and Delphine were little, Kylo used to pack them into the sidecar of one of his favorite speeders and take them for a long ride. Past the city limits, the speeder hummed along the wet roads that skirted the low blue mountains. As she got older, Shmi was allowed to sit behind her father, her arms wrapped securely around him, hands knotted together.

It was an elation: the feeling of weightlessness as they went around a bend, the wind rushing in her hair, the beautiful mechanics that made the speeder fly. Shmi felt like she’d been waiting to do this herself all her life. There was nothing she wanted more, except maybe her own lightsaber.

“Just around the lot,” Kylo said seriously, but his eyes were bright. “And if you do well, maybe I’ll let you take it around the block.”

“You mean it?”

He rapped lightly on the top of her helmet, smiling. “We’ll see. You ready?”

Shmi nodded rapidly, adjusting her hands on the controls. Beneath her, the speeder leaped, and then glided, as smooth as motor oil. It was exciting, but she knew the speeder was capable of much more. Emboldened, she circled faster on her next pass around the lot. The speeder roared like a living thing; her nerves lit up. She felt herself grinning. At the next bend, she gunned it.

For a second, she felt it: the perfect weightlessness, the jolt all through her body, like she was waking up. And then she realized, a heartbeat too late, that the speeder was too powerful for her to handle while moving this fast around a tight bend. She felt the machine slide out of her control as she rounded the corner, panicked, wrenched at the controls—and then she was spinning out, into the middle of the lot. The half-stripped shuttle her dads had just bought for scrap loomed huge in her vision, bigger each millisecond as the speeder careened toward it.

The front of the speeder buckled against the hull, metal screeching against metal. Shmi’s whole body was braced, her hands locked around the controls, but the impact threw her anyway, hard. The world tumbled around her, a blue-gray blur, end over end.

It happened so fast that Shmi wasn’t sure when or how it stopped—only that, suddenly, she wasn’t moving anymore, and that she hurt all over. Her ears were still ringing, her hearing distorted. Beneath her, the cracked duracrete was rough and unforgiving. The smell of fuel stung in her nose, like the speeder was leaking fluid. She tasted blood in her mouth, salty and hot. Later, she would realize that she had cut the inside of her lip on her teeth, but in the moment, she couldn’t figure out why the lower half of her face was slick with blood.

She couldn’t get up; her leg was pinned beneath the mangled speeder. Blindly, she shoved at it with the Force, and it lifted a few inches, but she could already feel her hold weakening as her concentration cracked. The speeder slipped out of her mental grip. But before it could slam down onto her leg again, someone else caught it—Kylo, who had come dashing over.

The Force rippled gently through the air while Kylo shifted the speeder away from her, then let it drop to the wet duracrete. She’d never known him to use the Force outside their home like this. The lot behind the garage was fairly private, shielded from the street, but someone still might’ve seen.

She moved to reach for Kylo, and cried out as a hot shock of pain lanced through her right arm. There was something wrong with it—she couldn’t move her hand the way she wanted. “Pa,” she said, voice creaking.

He shushed her, somewhat gently. “Hold still for me,” he said, somehow both calm and tense. Gingerly, he slid his arms around her back and under her knees, then picked her up. When Shmi was little, he used to scoop her up all the time, as easily as if she weighed nothing, and there was something comforting about being held by him now. “We’re going inside, and then we’ll get you taken care of. Okay?”

Each step Kylo took jostled her; Shmi’s arm was lighting up with pain, and her whole head hurt, and she couldn’t think clearly. Her mouth kept filling up with blood; the taste made her gag.

When they reached the garage, she felt Hux’s presence before she saw him. And then she heard his voice, sharp and demanding: “What happened? What did you do? Kylo, what have you done?”

The rest was a meaningless buzz in Shmi’s ears as Kylo carried her through the garage and up the narrow stairway that led to their apartment; her whole head was throbbing painfully in time with her pulse. Once inside, he laid her gently on the couch. Then he unbuckled her helmet and set it aside. Shmi saw that it was scuffed and cracked. That would’ve been her head, if she hadn’t been wearing the helmet.

Hux had stopped shouting by then, but he was projecting distress, loudly enough that Shmi could feel it in the Force. It clanged like a klaxon against her nerves.

Obie seemed to materialize out of thin air, telling Shmi to lie still and immediately running a scan. A minute later, she announced that Shmi had broken her arm and suffered a number of contusions, but nothing more serious. Hux didn’t take her word for it; he insisted that Obie check again, to make sure that Shmi wasn’t concussed or bleeding into her skull. He hovered nearby while Obie repeated the scans and got the same readings.

Having noticed the commotion, Delphine had wandered out of the bedroom and now lingered in the doorway, watching the proceedings. Del’s Force sensitivity was so acute that it was sometimes painful to her, and she reacted strongly to the emotions of the people around her—but oddly, she wasn’t sobbing, as Shmi might’ve expected. Instead, she just seemed to be taking in the scene, her eyes dark and focused.

While not a full-service medidroid, Obie was programmed with enough procedures to set Shmi’s broken arm, patch up her scrapes, and administer a mild painkiller. Hux still insisted on overseeing the process.

“I’m okay, Dad,” Shmi told him at one point, mumbling around her swollen lower lip, while Obie maneuvered her arm into a sling. “It’s not a big deal.”

He just smoothed one hand over her hair, careful around the bruised part of her scalp, and told her to lie still.

An hour later, Shmi was tucked securely in bed, broken arm folded across her chest, immobilized by the sling. She was meant to be sleeping, and she felt tired enough to nod off—but she could hear her parents’ voices through the thin wall that separated their bedrooms, hushed but urgent. On the other side of the room, Delphine was curled up in her own bed, headphones over her ears, intently watching a captioned holovid on her datapad.

Kylo and Hux used to argue a lot, Shmi recalled. She had dim memories of hearing dishes smashing, and her parents yelling, and someone else pounding on the wall. But that was a long time ago. Now the two of them did almost all of their fighting in their bedroom, when they thought Shmi and Delphine were asleep. They never threw objects anymore, only words, though that was bad enough. Hux could be cutting when he wanted to be.

“She’s done well all the times I went out with her,” Kylo was saying. Sometimes it was interesting to eavesdrop on their conversations, but this time, it just made Shmi’s insides squirm. They were arguing about her. She knew she shouldn’t have gone so fast; she wished she could take it back. “I didn’t expect her to gun it like that. She knows better.”

“And so do you! Kylo, you should never have let her pilot that speeder alone. She’s thirteen years old—”

“Exactly. She’s thirteen. It had to happen sometime, and I thought she was ready.”

“Obviously, she wasn’t.” By the sound of it, Hux was speaking through gritted teeth.

“She comes from a long line of pilots. It’s in her blood. You shouldn’t be surprised that she wants to—”

“Don’t give me that,” Hux said witheringly. “You don’t get to excuse your negligence with nonsense about your low-life ancestors.”

Kylo made a frustrated noise. “She’s a kid, Hux! You can’t expect her to act logically all the time. Kids do stupid things, and sometimes they hurt themselves. It’s normal.”

“Normal?” Hux’s voice was taut. “How can you say that? She could’ve broken her neck!”

“You’re blowing this out of proportion,” Kylo said. In Shmi’s experience, that was usually the worst possible thing to say to Hux. He didn’t like being told that he was behaving irrationally, especially when he really was. “It’s just a broken arm. You and I were both getting up to much more dangerous things when we were her age.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?” 

“I thought she was dead!” Hux’s voice cracked, and Shmi felt herself go very still, gripping the blanket in her good hand. “I heard the crash, and then I saw you carrying her up the stairs, covered in blood and not moving, and I thought—” He broke off with a choked sound.

“You were afraid,” Kylo said quietly.

“Of course I was,” Hux said, voice thick, and those were words Shmi had never dreamed she’d hear him say. If there were things that Hux feared, she didn’t know about them. “I hate those speeders.”

“Hux…”

“It would’ve killed me. Don’t you understand that? I couldn’t—I can’t—”

Kylo shushed him, gently. “She’s safe. A couple of weeks, and she’ll be as good as new.”

They kept talking, but by then, Shmi was exhausted. Her dads’ voices faded into white noise as she let herself drift off.

 

\--

 

Shmi was half asleep—on her back, so as not to jostle her bad arm—when she heard the thin creak of the bedroom door opening. She didn’t need to open her eyes in order to know it was Hux: His footsteps were different than Kylo’s, and besides, she could sense him. Through the Force, she felt him move across the room to Delphine’s little bed. He stood there for half a minute, then approached Shmi.

She made an effort to look like she was actually sleeping. She could almost see Hux in her mind’s eye, a sort of Force-based echolocation that didn’t work all the time, blurry signals bouncing through the dark. He just looked at her for a long time. Once, he moved as if to touch her, but held back.

Eventually, he went back to bed.

 

\--

 

Since Delphine seems to be doing just fine on her own, Shmi decides to leave her to it. She’s never been much good at sabacc, anyway—and besides, the Damerons keep giving her sideways looks. She’d hoped to catch Felix alone, but that’s not going to happen right now. Maybe she’ll have another chance later, though she isn’t optimistic. She usually isn’t.

The low rumble of a speeder draws her around the other side of the house. When she sees Rey’s speeder at the bottom of the sloping footpath, she expects her father to be there, too, but Rey climbs out of the speeder alone. Finn is trotting down from the house to meet her, too far away to hear.

Shmi lingers in the shade of the blooming tree out front, taking comfort in the steady, gentle humming of the Force. This tree feels like the center of something, though she’s not sure what; all she knows is that it’s certainly ancient, older than anything she’s ever touched. It’s not unusual for her to feel connected to Force-sensitive life forms—the Force is the same everywhere, rivers and lakes all flowing from the same reservoir, and it recognizes itself—but the power resonates more strongly here than anywhere else Shmi has ever been.

“Hey!” Rey’s voice startles her. “Shmi!”

Finn turns, and Shmi feels herself go still as their eyes meet. The look he gives her is unreadable, the kind of inscrutable expression that Hux can achieve sometimes, and just as maddening. Maybe it’s a First Order thing, or a dad thing, or something equally mysterious that she’ll never fully understand. She just stares back at Finn for a moment, forcing herself to meet his eyes. She wonders what she looks like to him, especially after yesterday.

“Come here,” Rey calls, waving. “We were just talking about you!”

That makes it worse. Shmi sort of wants to die on the spot—but, no, that would be cowardly. Drawing herself up a little straighter, she makes her way down the footpath. Rey cuts the speeder’s engine as Shmi reaches them, and the sudden silence is deafening: just the wind in the Force tree.

“Finn reminded me that Snap Wexley ought to get here today, and he thinks the two of you will hit it off,” Rey says brightly. If that’s true, Finn’s expression gives no hint. “He’s a pilot, you know. He’s got stories you wouldn’t believe. Knew your grandfather, too…”

Shmi nods along as Rey goes on, but even if that’s true, she doubts Snap Wexley would like her. She’s beginning to see that this trip isn’t the clean slate she envisioned; it’s more like navigating a minefield, one where she keeps stepping wrong. Though Hux stayed at home, he’s here with them, always—in the empty spaces between their words, in the lingering glances people keep shooting at Shmi and Delphine. She couldn’t get away from him if she tried. He’s in her blood.

“Where’s my dad?” Shmi asks, attempting a casual tone. She’s much too old to hide behind his legs when she gets nervous, no matter how badly she might wish she could, but she’d still prefer him to be here.

“He’ll be along soon,” Rey says easily, and Shmi isn’t sure if she’s being evasive or not. Then Rey glances pointedly at the lightsaber clipped to Shmi’s belt. “You didn’t have that the last time we met. May I?”

Shmi hesitates, resisting the urge to glance at Finn. Then she nods and holds out the weapon, hilt-first.

Shmi’s lightsaber is not especially complex. She and Kylo had many long conversations about the design possibilities: pikes and dual blades, curved hilts, blade length. While she chose to replicate her father’s crossguard, her saber is designed to be lighter and quicker than Kylo’s, less of a broadsword and more of a rapier. The compressed synth-crystal resulted in a narrow blade; this gives her greater precision and control. Because the crystal is intact, her lightsaber doesn’t hiss and spit the way Kylo’s does.

It has a smooth, dark wooden hilt—not a master work by any means, but carved with her own hands. Most of the metal components are hidden inside the wooden casing. She’s proud of the end result. When she holds it, the saber feels right, the way she always dreamed it would.

“Good balance,” Rey says approvingly, testing the grip. “Nice and light. You built it yourself?”

Shmi nods. She spent months building her lightsaber, picking up components one at a time, meditating upon each one to make sure that it felt right. Kylo always said that anything would do in a pinch, but she would never wield any saber better than one she built with her own hands, using components that resonated with her. In that regard, he said, the saber would be almost like an extension of her arm.

Naturally, the most important component was the kyber crystal. There weren’t any to be found on her little moon, but that was no matter. In ancient times, when the Sith were denied access to sites where natural crystals could be found, they developed a method to create synthetic crystals: a combination of science and the power of the dark side.

There wasn’t much to it, actually. All she needed were the raw materials—minerals with a high carbon content, easy enough to get her hands on—and an appropriate forge. When the time came, Shmi placed the minerals into the forge, then meditated beside it for three days. She used the Force to shape the crystal.

Kylo said it was all right to draw upon the light side of the Force, when it felt natural to do so, and sometimes it did. But usually, the darkness felt more welcoming to her. The light was fickle: She could lose its favor at any moment, feel it abandon her, like the ground disappearing from under her feet. But the darkness wouldn’t leave. The dark side accepted her wild rages and her pain and her confusion, rushed to her in moments of weakness and wrapped itself around her, a familiar old friend. It filled her empty places. And she had never felt closer to the dark side then she did then, letting it flow through her as she guided the forging process.

In the end, she created a narrow, angular synth-crystal. Deep red, it pulsed like a heart in her hands. The moment she held it, she knew it was perfect.

“Do you train with a partner?” Rey asks now.

“With my dad, yeah.” Since Delphine isn’t skilled enough yet for actual lightsaber drills, Kylo is the only person Shmi can practice with. As a girl, she learned the basics from her father using wooden swords, and then with harmless practice sabers that he built for her and Delphine to use. He used to train them in the garage when it was closed, in the evenings or very early in the morning. Now that Shmi has her own lightsaber, however, she has to practice elsewhere—Hux doesn’t like anybody playing with functioning lightsabers in the garage.

At least once a week, she and Kylo take a speeder outside of the city, to the low blue mountains, where they can mediate and spar in private. More and more lately, Shmi likes to go on her own. It’s peaceful—just her, and her lightsaber, and the Force. She still practices in the garage every morning, before her dads open up for the day’s business.

Rey seems to consider that. Then she holds the lightsaber out to Shmi, offering. “Want to take it for a spin now?”

“Here?” Shmi blinks in surprise, even as she grasps the hilt. “With you?”

“Sure. I don’t get much practice these days. It’ll be fun.”

“The last time I saw you use a lightsaber, you kind of destroyed our house,” Shmi says thoughtfully. When Rey left that night, the apartment looked like a battleground. “We had to repaint. And get new furniture.”

“To be fair, I wasn’t the instigator in that situation,” Rey points out. “Your father started it.”

That much is true. Hux gave Kylo an earful for it, too, when things had quieted down the next day—but Rey doesn’t need to know that. “Well,” she says. “I guess there aren’t any tables to break out here.” Then she glances at Finn. “If you don’t mind.”

He seems surprised that she asked. “Fine by me,” he says at last, and she’s not sure if he really means it, but she takes a few steps back and ignites her lightsaber anyway.

Rey grins, drawing her own weapon.

The red blade hums in Shmi’s hand like a living thing. She twirls the saber, partly to warm up her wrist, partly to show off, as she and Rey circle away from the speeder, into the flat grassy field below the path. And when Rey moves into a ready stance, Shmi rushes to meet her.

Her father’s swordsmanship is skillful—beautiful, even, in Shmi’s opinion—but his technique is a bastardized form of an ancient style, blended with his own personal touches. Classical lightsaber combat is a lost art, gone the way of the Jedi; only incomplete knowledge remains. Kylo Ren was never formally taught any particular style, not even during his time as a padawan, because his own master never had the chance to learn the seven forms of lightsaber combat.

That said, her father draws mostly from the groundwork of Djem So, an aggressive, almost brutal style that emphasizes strength and forceful movement. There’s nothing subtle about it, and Shmi appreciates the straightforward approach. It suits her.

A lifetime of drills come back to Shmi, muscle memory, as her mind adjusts to Rey’s movements. Their blades bounce off each other, hissing sparks. Shmi’s body knows what to do: how to pivot and parry and turn, how to change the angle of the cut as she sweeps the blade down, how to spin the saber in her hand at the end of a strike to make the next one quicker. She doesn’t get inside Rey’s defense, but she pushes her backward—swinging, slashing, always advancing, each blow connecting to the next.

But Rey is lightning-quick, agile enough to spin and dance away from Shmi’s attacks. And she’s fought Kylo more than once; she’s seen these tricks before. Still, the harder she presses, the more Rey has to commit to her defense just to hold her off. It leaves her open to another strike.

Their blades leap together again, and this time, Shmi leans into it, adjusting the angle of the cut. Muscles straining, she brings the point over, and she feels Rey give, just a little. There it is—leverage. She pushes harder. She never really learned how to yield, only how to bear down mercilessly, to press so hard that her opponent breaks. She can almost her hear father telling her to strike _through_ her enemy.

“Good!” Rey shouts, actually smiling, the light of their weapons shining across her face. Then she deftly twists her lightsaber, using Shmi’s own weight against her, forcing her to skip backward to avoid the upward arc of her blade.

Shmi feels herself grinning, too, widely enough that her cheeks ache. She can’t remember the last time she had this much fun. She readies herself for the next bout, spinning the lightsaber in her hand.

“Shmi!”

As if in slow motion, she looks over her shoulder and sees that another speeder has rumbled up to the house, idling beside Rey’s. She was so caught up in the sparring that she didn’t notice. Kylo is climbing out of the driver’s side. In the passenger seat is Leia.

For a second, Shmi is stunned, so taken aback that she doesn’t move. Then, mechanically, she deactivates her lightsaber.

 

\--

 

Oddly, when Kylo has collected Delphine and all four of them are together at last, Shmi’s immediate thought is that Leia is much smaller than she’d expected.

In holos, Leia Organa seems to take up the whole room with the force of her personality alone; her presence seems separate from her stature, somehow. And while she exudes a certain presence in person, too, she is also undeniably petite. Shmi actually has to look down to meet her eyes. It throws her off-balance.

The four of them are standing around the south side of the house, where a few weathered wooden benches are arranged beneath the trees. Nobody moves to sit at first. They just stand there without speaking, studying one another.

Shmi wonders if she’s supposed to hug Leia. That’s what people do in holos, right? But just now, in reality, the thought of embracing Leia seems unbearably foreign. She can’t picture it. She doesn’t think she’d know where to put her hands, or how long she should hold on.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be here yesterday,” Leia says, skipping the formal introductions. “I had some unexpected business to attend to—but that’s not important now. I brought some things for you.” When Shmi and Delphine both look at her blankly, she explains: “It’s customary to exchange gifts on Life Day.”

“What?” Shmi asks stupidly. Rey never mentioned anything about gift-giving, in any of the correspondence leading up to this trip. Neither did Kylo, and presumably, he would know.

As if sensing her distress, Leia adds, “It isn’t mandatory, of course—”

“I’m not giving you anything,” Shmi blurts, and then winces internally at the way that sounded. Somehow everything she does comes across as too aggressive, too messy. Already, she’s making an ass of herself. “I mean, I didn’t bring anything for you.”

“That’s all right,” Leia says, with a benign, well-practiced smile. Then she reaches into a pocket skillfully hidden in the folds of her dress, and then offers a small, cloth-wrapped item to Delphine, who accepts it cautiously. “For you.”

Delphine unfolds the fabric to reveal an ornamental hair comb, worked all over with a delicate pattern, like waves. It’s opalescent, as if carved from a seashell or from the bones of some fantastic creature. The fading afternoon light scatters pale rainbows across the comb’s surface.

“It’s pretty,” Delphine marvels.

“It belonged to your great-grandmother,” Leia says, and beside her, Shmi feels Kylo tense.

“Really?” Delphine looks up in shock.

Leia nods. “When she died, many of her belongings found their way back to the Nabeirre family, cousins and such. A few ended up in my possession, once… certain information came to light.” Leia pauses, and if Shmi didn’t know better, she’d think that Leia looked briefly apprehensive, like she wasn’t sure how her gift would be received. “You mentioned how much you admire her. I thought—well, I thought you might like to have something of hers.”

In the last couple of years, Delphine has become intensely interested in Padmé Amidala. She collects holos of Amidala, which she downloads off the HoloNet: old footage from speeches before the Senate, royal appearances on Naboo. Hux rather disapproves of this hobby, for political reasons, but Shmi suspects that it’s not Amidala’s politics that have Delphine so enchanted. It’s the idea of her—the elaborate costumes, the regal bearing, the commanding presence.

Even to Shmi, Amidala seems almost magical, like a character from a fairy tale. She’s been built up over the decades into something approaching a myth, an idealized woman who was either a loyal friend of Emperor Palpatine, or who would’ve surely helped to lead the Rebel Alliance, had she lived—it all depends on who’s describing her. The Empire and the Rebellion both used her image and her legacy for their own purposes.

And, naturally, conspiracy theories about her death abounded, persisting even today. With medical technology being what it is, for a human to die in childbirth is almost unheard of, especially a woman like Amidala, who would’ve had access to the best care. It was as bizarre as dying of the common cold. Many believed there was more to it, something the Empire wanted to keep hidden. During the war, it wasn’t uncommon to see buildings defaced with the twin red dots representing peace and balance, tagged with the words _Amidala Lives!_ The sentiment—and the graffiti—can still be found on Naboo. At least, that’s what Shmi has heard.

It’s surreal to think that Padmé Amidala is Shmi’s great-grandmother, somehow harder to accept than Leia Organa or even Darth Vader. And yet, there in Delphine’s hands is something that belonged to her, something she touched and used—tangible proof that she was a real woman, once upon a time.

“I’ll put it in my keepsake chest,” Delphine says now, eagerly. Her eyes are practically shining. “Thank you.”

“I have a few other things that you might be interested in—holos, personal items,” Leia offers. Perhaps she’s bolstered by Delphine’s positive response. “I brought them with me. I’d be happy to show you.”

Delphine looks like she might faint. “I’d like that very much,” she says.

Leia smiles gently, then looks to Shmi. Again, she reaches into the folds of her dress. “And I have something for you, Shmi. I hope you’ll like it.”

Shmi’s heart does a slow, painful somersault. For some reason she can’t place, she doesn’t want to know what Leia brought for her. Awkwardly, she says, “It’s okay. You don’t have to—”

“It’s no trouble,” Leia says, perhaps thinking that Shmi is playing at polite refusal, the way you’re supposed to when somebody tries to do something nice for you and you don’t want to look overeager. But that’s not it at all. “I insist—”

“I don’t want it,” Shmi says, too forcefully, and this time, she can’t help but wince at the sound of her own voice. She didn’t mean for it to come out like that, but the words weren’t untrue. All the messages and holos they exchanged suddenly seem empty and impersonal, without substance, a poor substitute for an actual connection. It doesn’t feel right to accept a gift from Leia right now, not when she feels acutely aware of the fact that they don’t really know each other.

She doesn’t want to think that Leia is trying to manipulate her through gifts, something tailored to her personality—and yet, this is exactly the sort of thing her parents used to warn her about when she was little. If the New Republic captured them, Hux used to say, they’d likely ply the girls with gifts and sweet words, to create the illusion of safety, to make Shmi and Delphine relax their guard. The moment Shmi began thinking of the New Republic as the good guys would be the moment of greatest danger, Hux warned. 

Red-faced, Shmi clears her throat. “I mean—you don’t have to give me anything. Really.”

Leia’s expression remains carefully neutral, but something changes in her eyes. “Of course,” she says. “Perhaps another time.” She takes her hand out of her pocket and smoothes her dress with her palms. “So, would you like to sit down?”

 

\--

 

Evening comes, and Poe asks them all to stay for dinner. Leia doesn’t hang around; she makes her excuses, something about replying to important correspondence, and gracefully returns to her ship.

Despite herself, Shmi is a little disappointed. She wonders if it’s her fault, if she made Leia feel unwelcome by refusing her gift, though the rest of the afternoon was pleasant enough. 

Nothing catastrophic happened, at least: They just sat under the shady trees and talked about their trips, the weather on Yavin IV, Shmi’s lightsaber training. Kylo actually eased off, giving them some privacy, though Shmi doubts he went farther than around the corner of the house. The conversation was perfectly mild, no deeper than most of their previous communications.

Shmi isn’t sure why she expected anything else. Of course meeting Leia in person didn’t magically make sense of Shmi’s life, the way she’d sort of hoped it would. The missing pieces were still gone.

Dinner is loud and chaotic and uncomfortable, a dozen people squeezed around one long table, close enough to bump elbows, but Shmi feels stupidly grateful just to have been invited. Despite her behavior yesterday, the Damerons are giving her another shot—though she notices Felix and Finn both eyeing her carefully all through dinner. Still, it feels like a victory.

She spends the meal sandwiched between Kylo and Delphine. Her father doesn’t speak much, except a few quiet words to Rey; meanwhile, Delphine chatters happily to anyone who’ll look her way. For her part, Shmi speaks only when spoken to by Clauda, Rey, or Poe. She prefers to watch and listen. It’s better this way, she thinks—less pressure. And besides, it’s interesting, like observing another culture.

Poe and Finn act like the married people in holos. Shmi noticed right away, when she saw them together. They’re endlessly teasing and flirting, looking for excuses to grab the other by the hand or around the waist, like they can’t bear not to touch. Their children seem used to it, rolling their eyes and laughing. It’s kind of fascinating to Shmi, but at the same time, they’re so openly affectionate that she’s embarrassed just to watch them.

Her dads don’t behave like this. She sees them kiss now and then, and she’s plenty old enough to know what it means when she hears the rhythmic creaking of their bed through the wall at night (she also knows to hurriedly put on her headphones to block the noise), but they’re not especially affectionate with each other. They don’t have pet names, they don’t wander around holding hands, and they bicker over petty things.

Despite this, Shmi realizes for the first time that she’s never doubted that they love each other, in a deep and consuming way. If they didn’t, she thinks, they wouldn’t have stayed married all this time. One of them would’ve bailed by now, surely; neither of her fathers seem the type to ignore the escape shuttles while the ship’s exploding.

As it is, Kylo and Hux fight like Tusken Raiders, but they always end up in the same bed at night. Shmi walks past their wedding holo every day, on a shelf in the sitting room, and they still look at each other the way they did in that picture—like they really _see_ each other, completely. Like they understand something that nobody else does.

The rest of the evening is uneventful, which is better than Shmi had hoped for. Maybe she can do this after all, so long as she keeps her mouth shut and her hands to herself. It helps that nobody mentions Hux. She suspects that, after what happened yesterday, the Damerons are probably under strict instructions not to bring him up in conversation, or even think about him too loudly. Through her actions, she’s made him even more taboo than before. _Great work, Shmi,_ she thinks grimly.

By the time they get back to the shuttle, it’s late enough that Shmi feels drained, the long day catching up to her. She keeps replaying her first meeting with Leia in her head, pulling it apart and reconstructing it in ways that aren’t so terribly awkward. To facilitate this process, she goes immediately to her bunk and lies there, stewing. It’s sort of a hobby for her.

Delphine stays up for a while to talk to Hux, probably gushing about that hair comb, which hasn’t left her hands except to eat dinner—and even then, it only moved as far as her lap. When she eventually comes to bed, Shmi doesn’t inquire as to what else she and Hux might’ve talked about, because she doesn’t care.

She doesn’t.

Later, she’s tracing imaginary patterns into the ceiling when she feels Delphine nudging at her mind from the bottom bunk: a persistent pressure, more annoying than anything else. Shmi pretends to be asleep, but it’s no use. Heaving a sigh, she relents and allows Delphine in.

 _You should talk to Dad,_ Delphine murmurs, directly into Shmi’s mind. Her voice sounds a little different than when she’s speaking out loud; communicating like this, Shmi hears her sister the way Delphine hears herself, and vice versa.

Shmi grimaces. _Mind your own business, Del._

_He misses you._

_I don_ _’t think so,_ Shmi tells her, but the thought prickles at her. She rolls over, then aggressively adjusts her pillow. _He didn_ _’t even ask to talk to me._

 _You could_ _’ve asked him,_ Delphine points out, annoyingly.

 _I shouldn_ _’t have to! And besides, I don’t have anything to say to him. It doesn’t matter._

_But, Shmi—_

_Goodnight, Del,_ Shmi projects resolutely. Then she hauls up her mental barriers once more, pushing Delphine out of her mind with effort. For another minute, Delphine prods at her hopefully, seeking permission.

Shmi just presses her face into the cold side of her pillow and waits for sleep.

 

\--

 

“Dad?” Shmi asked, pushing her protective goggles up onto her forehead and angling her face toward her father. On the workbench in front of her, bits and pieces of her current project—a salvaged, malfunctioning mouse droid that she thought would make a good toy for Millicent, if she could get it working—were scattered all over the place. Hux liked her to keep a tidy space, but she never managed it for long.

“What?” Hux didn’t glance up as he said it, his eyes focused on the mechanical components in front of him.

The garage was closed for the night, empty but for the two of them. The only sounds were the clatter of tools. Shmi was fourteen, and she relished this time they spent together, tinkering at opposite ends of the bench. Once upon a time, she used to climb into Hux’s lap every night after dinner and listen to him read. Now she was old enough, mature enough, to sit with him while he worked instead, and to work on her own projects. It made her feel like she was growing up.

Slowly, cautiously, Shmi asked, “If you hadn’t been a prisoner when you found out you were pregnant—I mean, if you’d been on your ship—would you have had me?”

Before the night that Rey appeared out of nowhere, a couple of months ago now, Shmi had never given it much thought. Then she overheard Rey describe her as a “surprise,” when she clearly meant “accident.”

Now she was aware, in a way she never used to be, that her existence was a mistake. There was no other way to put it. Her parents never had any intention of creating her. Delphine was undoubtedly made on purpose—Kylo and Hux had said as much. They’d _wanted_ Del, actively tried to have her. But Shmi was a different story.

Hux paused for a long moment, his expression carefully neutral. “No,” he said at last. “I wouldn’t have.”

“Oh.” Shmi’s face spasmed slightly before she got it under control. She was never as good at masking her emotions as Hux—he always said, despairingly, that she took after her other father—though at least she was better at it than Delphine, most of the time. “All right. I was just wondering.”

A tense moment passed. Shmi yanked her goggles back down, wishing she hadn’t said anything. She felt a pulse of something from Hux—a vague sense of guilt, or maybe a twinge of regret. But she wasn’t the best at reading other people’s emotions. She could feel out the edges, the basic shapes, but the nuances escaped her.

“I was in the middle of a war, Shmi,” Hux said abruptly. Then paused, exhaling through his nose, and set his tools down. He gave her a level look. “I’d never planned on having children. Up to that point, I’d thought I was physically incapable—”

“So I was an accident.”

“You were… entirely unexpected,” he allowed, almost delicately.

“You didn’t want me.” She felt sure of it now, where before it was only a niggling fear, a suspicion.

A narrow line appeared between Hux’s eyebrows. “I’ve only ever been honest with you about what happened. Would you prefer that I lie?”

Despite herself, she winced. “No,” she mumbled, glad of the goggles that hid her eyes. She looked down at the workbench and grabbed a tool at random. “I get it.”

“Shmi—” Hux stopped short. He wiped his hands on his coveralls, though they weren’t dirty. At last, he said, “I didn’t want a child, no. You’re right about that. But I didn’t have much choice. It was a… difficult period.” He cleared his throat. “In all honesty, I disconnected myself from the process as much as I could. You weren’t quite real to me until I felt you moving. And even then, I didn’t want to get attached. It wasn’t as if I’d get to keep you.” He paused, and she could feel him watching her, even if she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “When you were born, I wasn’t even allowed to look at you before the medidroid took you away. Did I ever tell you that?”

“No.” That got her to raise her head enough to see him. Hux had told her the bare bones of the story, a long time ago, but Shmi had never pressed for greater detail. He didn’t seem especially keen to talk about the year he spent as a prisoner, and it didn’t feel right to prod him.

“I’d always assumed that would happen. Up to that point, I’d thought it wouldn’t bother me, because I’d convinced myself that I didn’t want you.” He huffed quietly, shaking his head. “Then you were born, and it wasn’t as simple as I’d imagined it would be.”

“And then Pa came for us,” Shmi said, pushing her goggles back up onto her forehead. She used to love hearing the tale from Kylo—how he’d found the planet where Shmi’s grandmother abandoned her, and then rescued Hux from the clutches of his enemies, so the three of them could be a family.

 “Quite right. At that point, I could’ve gone back to the First Order—what was left of it, anyway. I could’ve disappeared on my own and left you with your father. I won’t say I wasn’t tempted a few times,” Hux added, glancing at her, and Shmi could never tell when he was joking. “But I didn’t, because I wanted you.”

Shmi worried her lower lip between her teeth. “More than you wanted to be emperor?”

“Now you’re just fishing for compliments,” Hux said, but he smiled to soften it, and she smiled back.

They both went back to work.

 

\--

 

When Shmi wakes, sunlight turning the backs of her eyelids scarlet, it takes her a moment to remember that she’s not in her own bed, and that it’s Life Day.

Back home, the sun would be struggling to burn through the mist, but on this moon, there’s no mist or rain to speak of. Shmi’s only seen weather like this in holos. All the same, thinking of home makes her think of Hux. What’s he doing now? She doesn’t even know what time it is on Pacifica 9, if he’s likely to be awake or asleep. She wonders if he’s thought of her at all these last few days, or if he’s tried to push her from his mind just as she has to him.

With determination, Shmi hauls herself out of bed. She’s less groggy today, though that doesn’t mean she’s totally alert. Delphine’s bunk is empty—Shmi can hear the sonic shower humming—so she bypasses the refresher for now, wandering barefoot into the galley in her sleeping clothes. Kylo is there already, fussing with the caf brewer.

“Morning, Pa,” she says, around a yawn.

“Don’t eat,” Kylo warns, when Shmi makes a beeline toward the fridge. “You’re having breakfast with—Leia.” He hesitates over her name, the briefest of stumbles, and it makes Shmi wonder what he’d almost called her. _Your grandmother,_ maybe, or _my mother._ Maybe even just _Organa._

“Really?”

“On her ship, yeah.”

“Since when? Says who?”

“She asked and I accepted. I thought you’d be glad.”

Shmi sputters. “Why?”

He gives her a look. “This trip was your idea, princess.”

“Well, you still should’ve checked with me first, before you volunteered me for anything,” she mumbles, because she can’t say it’s not her fault they’re here. It was her insistence that did it. She glances up at him. “Will you come?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Not if you think it’s weird. Which it would be,” she says with a sigh. He’s right—she wanted this. She can’t spend the whole trip clinging to him. She has to face these people on her own, the way she’d been so determined to do in the beginning.

“It’s all weird, Shmi,” Kylo says, and that’s enough to make her smile faintly. Then he pauses, looking at her with dark eyes, and takes a step closer. “You should call your dad tonight.”

“Is that an order or something?” she asks dryly.

“I’m serious.”

Shmi lets out a breath. “No point,” she says, leaning against the counter by the sink. She crosses her arms. “He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“I don’t think that’s true. And even if it were, you shouldn’t let that stop you. If you don’t tell him how you feel, you’ll regret it.”

“Pa, I can’t just—” she starts to complain, in a sour tone.

“Maybe not today or tomorrow,” Kylo says, looking at her intently. “But someday, when you realize you’ve left it too long and it’s too late. You don’t want to live with that, Shmi.”

The rest of what she’d meant to say withers as she takes in his full meaning. She swallows hard, dropping her arms to her sides. Then her voice softens. “Pa…”

Kylo shakes his head. All he says is, “Don’t be stubborn. Call your dad.”

Then he closes the distance between them, presses a kiss to the top of her head, and leaves the galley. She stares after him, the words still stuck in her throat.

 

\--

 

“Threepio, what am I supposed to do with this?” Shmi asks, twirling a tiny silver fork in one hand. It was sitting beside her breakfast plate when she got here and she hasn’t found an obvious use for it yet, halfway through the meal.

“Oh, dear,” Threepio frets. He sounds absolutely dismal, and Shmi has to bite down on a smile, lest he think she’s not taking him seriously. And she’s not, but he doesn’t need to know that. He takes a few stiff steps closer to the long dining table. “Someone has clearly neglected another aspect of your education! How terrible. At your age, you ought to have a strong command of dining etiquette. But never fear, I can change that. Now, this particular utensil is used to eat—”

Leia glances across the table at him, a little exasperated. “Threepio, I’m not sure this is the right time for one of your lectures.”

“No, it’s okay, he’s helping me,” Shmi says quickly. She doesn’t want the droid to get in trouble. “What were you saying, Threepio?”

Maybe Threepio was annoying in larger doses, but as it is, Shmi is a little charmed by his fussiness. He makes her miss Obie, who is similarly fastidious, always worried about the tiny details, and never happier than when she is performing her programmed functions. To that end, Shmi has been asking him questions about the yacht, and this moon, and proper etiquette. He answers in excruciating detail, and Shmi pretends to be very interested. It’s oddly comforting to talk to him, much easier than speaking with Leia. She understands droids. Leia, not so much.

More than an hour ago, Kylo walked Shmi and Delphine to the other side of the port, where the larger freighters and cruisers are docked. Leia, it turns out, arrived in a sleek yacht. It’s probably modest as far as yachts go, and manned only by a crew of droids, but Shmi’s eyes still widened when she saw it there, gleaming in the sunlight, so beautifully designed.

A gold-plated droid greeted them, addressing Kylo as “Master Ben,” which seemed to make him uncomfortable. He didn’t stay any longer than necessary. Once the droid—who he called Threepio—had shepherded Shmi and Delphine on board, he took his leave. Then Threepio led them into the galley, which is big enough that the quaint word almost doesn’t seem to apply. Leia was waiting to receive them.

The table is laid out with an impressive, colorful array of fruits, delicately sliced meats and cheeses, and little frosted confections, as well as carafes of juice, blue-tinted milk, tea, and caf. It’s a little much, Shmi thinks—but it occurs to her eventually that Leia doesn’t know what sort of food she and Delphine eat. Maybe she’s overcompensating with variety. That would be less strange than imagining she sits down to a spread like this every morning and then hardly touches any of it.

It’s all unfamiliar to Shmi: the fancy food and the fancier yacht, even the special utensils, which Hux would call decadent. Her earliest memories are of the dingy little unit where they lived when they first came to Pacifica 9. The rest of her life so far has been spent in the cozy apartment above the garage.

She wonders what her parents would make of this. As a child, Kylo bounced between Leia’s opulent senatorial suites and Han’s many backwater bolt holes, at least before he was sent to live with Luke; he’s always seemed perfectly at home on Pacifica 9, like it suits him. Meanwhile, Hux probably spent his earliest years hidden in the servants’ quarters with his teenage mother, and followed by various austere Star Destroyers. He might be a little disgusted by all of this excess.

While Delphine engages Leia in a lively conversation about the current senate session, which she’s followed closely via the holonews, Shmi steadily shoves food into her mouth so she doesn’t have to participate much, then gets chided by Threepio for putting her elbows on the table. Unlike Delphine, she isn’t particularly interested in politics; she has no skill for interpersonal relations, no charisma to speak of. Even with her Force sensitivity, Delphine is more like Hux than Shmi could ever be, in the best ways: clever, analytical, interested in how things work. She and Hux relate to each other in a way that Shmi can’t.

Delphine can play holochess with Hux and give him a fair challenge. Shmi stopped playing chess with her father years ago, when she realized she could never win.

“I have a question,” Shmi says eventually, swallowing a mouthful of some kind of sweetbread. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, which makes Threepio sigh as much as a droid can.

Leia’s eyebrows arch delicately as she turns her attention to Shmi. “Yes?”

“When’s my birthday?”

A second passes. Leia blinks. “Your birthday?”

“It’s just, we’re not sure,” she says, a little awkward, already wishing she hadn’t asked. But she’s always wondered. “Dad says it was hard to keep track of the time while he was—you know, on your base. So he doesn’t know the exact date. We’ve just been approximating all this time.”

“Of course,” Leia says, and maybe Shmi is imagining things, but she thinks her voice sounds a little fainter. “You were born on the third day of the seventh month, according to the standard calendar. It was a Taungsday. I don’t know what the local date would’ve been.”

“Oh.” So Hux’s estimate was off by more than a week. She’s a little older than she thought she was.

Leia sips her caf, then looks between Shmi and Delphine. “Now, have the two of you made any plans for university?”

“What do you mean?” Delphine asks.

“Well, you’re getting to be the right age. If you’re interested in studying politics, or engineering, or any other subject, there are a number of excellent universities on Coruscant. Have you ever thought of visiting, taking a tour?”

“No,” Shmi says, because it’s true. Her whole life, she’s never imagined going to the Core, because it’s too dangerous. She can’t picture it. “And we’ve never done—you know. Regular school.”

“There aren’t any schools on your moon?”

“There are,” Delphine says blithely. “Dad just didn’t want to send us there.”

“I see.” Leia’s tone is disapproving. “And has he handled your education himself?”

“Yeah. He’s a good teacher,” Shmi feels compelled to say, not wanting Leia to think they’re complete buffoons. Hux is a genius—that’s what the holodocs usually say. In that sense, he’s probably overqualified for the position of home-school teacher. “He designed the educational programs for the junior stormtroopers.”

It sounds weird the moment she says it out loud, and she doesn’t miss how Leia’s mouth thins. But Shmi thinks she’s had a decent education, all things considered. Hux has certainly taken it seriously. Shmi and Delphine have studied composition, math and science, history and politics. Shmi can read High Galactic, though she can’t imagine she’ll ever have much need of it, and she can discuss dull, pretentious, late Imperial-era poetry—a favorite subject of Hux’s.

“Well,” Leia says at last. “It’s something to think about, that’s all.”

Delphine steers the conversation toward the podracing circuit and an upcoming championship race on Tatooine—a kindness, since it’s something Shmi is actually knowledgeable about. She follows racing more closely than she does galactic politics, yet another thing about her that Hux doesn’t really understand.

But in the back of her mind, Shmi can’t help but circle back to Leia’s brief talk of the future. It makes her uneasy. No, she hasn’t made any plans for university. She hasn’t mapped out much of anything, really, beyond the contingency plans and disaster scenarios that have been drilled into her since she was small. It feels like her whole life has been in preparation for a danger that never came—and where does that leave her now?

 

\--

 

Rain hissed against the blade of Shmi’s lightsaber, evaporating instantly. She squinted against the water sluicing into her eyes. Sensing movement behind her, she pivoted, swept her blade up, and barely blocked a brutal slash from her opponent’s lightsaber.

Locked together, the red blades sparked and burned, the light reflected in Kylo’s dark eyes. When they broke apart, she danced backward, out of his reach, and then rushed back in. She didn’t want to surrender any more ground than she had to. Kylo parried her next blow easily, knocking her blade aside and spinning his own lightsaber in his hand, seamlessly transitioning into a savage cut.

“Harder!” he shouted, when her next strike barely bounced off his defense. “Don’t be afraid to hit me!”

“I’m not—” She positioned her blade to block him, expecting a swipe to her side, but he changed the angle at the last second, forcing her to skip backward just to avoid being hit.

“You’re holding back,” he said sharply, punctuating his words with a strike so forceful that it sent her stumbling backward. She kept her feet under her, but then she was on the defensive, swinging her lightsaber just to hold him off. “You think the rebels will take it easy on you? You have to _mean_ it, Shmi—”

Kylo drove her backward over the muddy ground. He slammed his lightsaber down so hard that her whole body jolted when their blades met. Finally, he pinned her against the trunk of a massive, old-growth tree. She knew he wouldn't hurt her, not really—but her pulse was pounding so hard that she could feel it in her throat. As Kylo closed the distance between them, he seemed to take up her whole field of vision. Inside of her, something leaped, and a sudden strength rushed through her like a shot of adrenaline, the kind that only came in moments like this.

The dark side.

Shmi swung her lightsaber to meet his, then leaned into him, using her weight. Their blades locked again, but this time, she had leverage. With a yell, she threw herself at Kylo— slashing and cutting, so quickly that he had no room to advance, no time to do anything but parry her strikes. She pushed him back one step, then another, and then she noticed that he was grinning.

“Good!” he yelled, above the crackling of their lightsabers. His eyes were dark and bright. “Get angry!”

She spun the lightsaber in her hand, readying for the next attack. Anger, she thought. Passion. Somehow, she always forgot that was the secret.

 

\--

 

Later, huddled in the shelter of the thin tent they’d brought with them, Shmi and Kylo ate rehydrated rations for dinner. Rain drummed against the tent, a familiar and pleasant music. Shmi had pulled her wet hair out of its knot and left it loose to dry.

Kylo pointed to the raw scrape on her bicep. She didn’t remember how it happened—when she fell this morning, maybe, or when she accidentally threw herself into a tree while practicing Force jumps. “Get a bacta patch on that, or your dad’ll do worse to me when we get home.”

Shmi scoffed. “It’s just a scratch,” she said, around a mouthful of food. “It won’t kill me.”

“I know. But he worries about you enough as it is.”

“Well, he shouldn’t,” Shmi groused. “I don’t need him hovering all the time. I’m sixteen. I’m practically an adult.”

For some reason, that made Kylo smile. “You’re also his baby,” he told her. “And that’s not going to change, so you’d better get used to it.”

“He doesn’t like me sparring with you even when I don’t get a stupid little scratch,” she muttered, before taking another bite. “It’ll just be one more thing for him to complain about. He always finds something wrong.”

Kylo paused, and it was one of those moments when Shmi wished she could hear his thoughts. He was well-practiced at guarding them, though; she wasn’t skilled enough to get inside his head without his permission. “Hux isn’t like us,” Kylo said at last. “It’s hard for him to understand, because he doesn’t know the Force the way we do. But he tries. He knows it’s important to you. That’s why he helped with your lightsaber.”

Shmi considered that. Hux designed the machine that forged her synth-crystal, based on schematics of other geological compressors and some historical accounts he’d dredged up somewhere. It had been a surprise for Shmi, a present when she turned fifteen, one that shocked and delighted her.

Up to that point, Hux had never seemed keen on the idea of her building a lightsaber. When she was younger, he forbade Kylo from letting her handle his saber, didn’t even like her looking at it too closely. As she got older, he showed little interest in her progress with the different combat forms. Shmi had always assumed that he didn’t really want her to have a lightsaber, for some reason—and yet, he built the forge for her. Later, when she began planning her lightsaber’s design, he helped her draft the schematics and double-checked the wiring, though she did the actual construction alone.

“Your dad didn’t understand the Force, either,” Shmi said slowly, glancing at Kylo. They didn’t usually discuss Han Solo—it was a sore subject for Kylo even now, and Shmi wasn’t exactly comfortable with it, either—but sometimes, talking about it was necessary, a useful pain, like cleaning out a wound.

Kylo hummed in acknowledgment. “No. He didn’t really try to, either. Not until it was much too late.”

“But that wasn’t why you…” She trailed off, unsure of how to say it. The words felt clumsy in her mouth. “I mean—if it weren’t for Snoke, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“It was Snoke’s command, but it was my choice,” he told her. His eyes were dark and faraway, focused on the carpet of blue-green ferns on the ground outside, visible through the tent’s clear front panel. “The truth is, I loved my father. And he loved me. I know that now. But at the time, I couldn’t see it.”

That was hard for Shmi to grasp. There had never been a time when she doubted that her father loved her, understood her, accepted her. Even if she couldn’t sense it through the Force, she would recognize it by his actions. Then again, maybe he went out of his way to show her because his own father hadn’t, and it led to disaster.

She couldn’t imagine such a wide gulf opening between her and Kylo. She hoped she never could. “Do you wish you could take it back?”

“Every day,” Kylo said, like it was a simple truth. He swallowed. “I’ll never forgive myself, nor should I. But as much as I regret it, that was also the moment I began to turn away from Snoke. The moment I turned onto the path that led me here. I can’t regret you, or your sister, or your dad.” He paused, looking at her with an almost bruised softness in his eyes. “When you were born, I was terrified. I had no idea how to be someone’s dad. I was sure I’d ruin it, like everything else in my life.” The rain seemed very loud against the tent. “All I knew for sure was that I loved you, and I never wanted to put you in the position I was in when I was a kid.”

“You haven’t,” Shmi told him, without hesitation. “You could never. Pa—” She grasped at his sleeve, almost instinctively. “You did a good job.”

He smiled, faint but warm. “Well,” he said, “you’re a good kid. So it was pretty easy.”

She huffed, bumping him with her shoulder.

They went back to watching the rain.

 

\--

 

Around midmorning, Rey picks up the three of them in her speeder. Kylo isn’t with her; she says he plans to come by the house later. Shmi wonders how much of his absence is an attempt to give her and Delphine enough space to navigate on their own, and how much is simply feeling that he doesn’t have the right to be there.

It’s chaos at the Dameron house, the whole family darting in different directions, plus the visitors who’ve already arrived. Shmi recognizes a few of them even before she’s introduced, from all her reading on the HoloNet about the war. When Rey herds Shmi toward Snap Wexley and Jessika Pava, they’re both polite if not warm, and nobody could blame them for it. Shmi certainly doesn’t. She could go without the forced friendliness, in all honesty, but she doesn’t have the heart to tell Rey.

In the kitchen, Poe is busily preparing food for the party; he has to keep swatting his younger children’s hands away from the bowls and trays, but he slips Delphine a little pastry with a wink. Outside, the biggest tree behind the house has been selected as the Life Day tree—a very important symbol, as Shmi understands it—and Finn is arranging benches and chairs around it, so everyone can gather there later tonight. He’s got the older kids doing the grunt work, directing them as they haul benches around on the grass.

Shmi is looking for the refresher when she bumps into Felix, in the narrow hallway off the kitchen. For a second, they just stare at each other, uncertain.

“Hey,” Shmi says at last, in what she hopes is a normal tone.

“Hey,” Felix says, without meeting her eyes, and tries to duck around her. Instinctively, Shmi steps aside, blocking his path. That makes his pulse spike—Shmi senses it. “Look, I don’t want to get into it again. You established dominance already. You don’t have to, like, finish the job.”

“What? No, I wasn’t—”

“I stayed out of your way yesterday, so I don’t know what your problem is.” He makes another break for it, and she sidesteps again, cutting him off.

“Will you let me talk for a second?” she says crossly. “Kriff, I just wanted to apologize.”

Felix blinks. His shoulders are tense, like he’s braced for something. “Really?”

“Yeah. I was completely out of line the other day.” As she speaks, it occurs to Shmi that maybe she shouldn’t have cornered him like this. It might not have been the best backdrop for her apology. “It’s okay if you’re pissed at me—I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry. That’s all.”

“Huh,” Felix says.

“So do you accept?”

“What?”

“My apology. Do you accept it? You don’t have to.”

“I mean—sure, I guess,” Felix says slowly, looking at her like she spontaneously sprouted a third eye.

“Oh.” It’s a relief, sort of. Shmi isn’t well-practiced at apologies. She doesn’t have to make them often; in her family, they make their reparations mostly through behavior, not through words. She’s noticed it between her parents, especially: If Hux speaks harshly to Kylo, for instance, he doesn’t say he’s sorry—but later, he might touch Kylo gently, or lay out his clothes for the next day, or make any number of small, affectionate gestures, until any hurt has been eased. It’s always been that way with them. She isn’t sure how it works for other people, at least outside of holos, which she’s beginning to understand aren’t always the most accurate representation of normal life. “Okay. Thank you.”

That seems to surprise Felix. He pauses, watching her uncertainly, and then coughs a little. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that shit about your father. Not because it isn’t true,” he adds quickly, eyes slightly narrowed. “But it’s not your fault, so I shouldn’t hold it against you.”

Shmi pauses to take that in, disquieted. The words prickle at her. But she doesn’t want to fight again, so she tries to let it go. “That’s—yeah, okay,” she says at last. She runs her tongue over her teeth. “So we’re good? Is that how it works?”

“Yeah, I guess so. We’re good. Just don’t, you know—” Felix gestures vaguely with his hands. “Crush my windpipe with the Force, or whatever.”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to worry. If I wanted to do that, I would’ve done it then,” Shmi says earnestly.

Felix stares at her for a second. Then he huffs a laugh, sounding only slightly hysterical. “You’re really weird, you know that?”

She wilts a little. “I don’t get out much.”

“I kind of guessed,” he says. As if to soften the words, he smiles. Impossibly, it makes him look like Poe.

 

\--

 

As the afternoon stretches on, more people arrive, so many that it’s hard to keep track. Every time she turns around, Rey or Poe is introducing her to someone new. They’re only being kind, she knows, trying to make her feel normal, like she belongs here—but it’s a lot to take in, on both sides. She can sense how tense most people are upon meeting her. All of Rey’s old war buddies know exactly who she is and where she came from.

Most people don’t have much to say to her except a few generic pleasantries. She doesn’t mind that, really, as long as the conversation doesn’t drag on. More than once, someone tells her, “You look just like your dad.” The tone is different each time—surprised, alarmed, uncertain. Shmi never knows what they really mean, if it’s supposed to be a compliment or an insult or just an observation. And she never knows what to say in response.

She helps Rey string lights on the massive Life Day tree, the two of them using the Force to drape the wires over the branches. When it’s done, she’s sort of proud of her handiwork, and curious about how the tree will look when it’s illuminated. But she’s had just about enough forced conversation for the time being. She needs a break, just a few minutes someplace quiet, to gird herself for the rest of the day.

Except the house is full of people, and the exterior isn’t much better. But the roof, Shmi notices, is sloping and angular, sort of mismatched from all the additions to the house. It’s got at least a few decent nooks, she suspects, especially around the south side, where a pair of old, leafy trees nestle against the house, almost leaning into it. Their wide branches cast shade over the roof.

All Shmi has to do is linger beneath the trees and wait until no one is looking her way. One well-timed Force jump, and she’s landing lightly on the rooftop, easy as anything. She crouches quickly, then determines that she’s hidden by the angle of the roof and the thick foliage. Perfect. She sits cross-legged and concentrates on making herself disappear.

Shmi can hide herself in the Force if she wants to, wrap herself in so many layers that even her dad can’t perceive her. It’s a skill he taught her when she was young, honed over time. Looking back, she realizes that he’d wanted her to be able to hide from other Force-sensitives—namely Rey. Even now, Shmi is still discovering ways her parents have tried to keep her safe.

For a while, she just relishes the solitude. The only sound is the wind in the branches. Sunlight flashes through the leaves, making patterns skitter across the rooftop and the bare skin of her arms. From here, she can sense the Force tree: a steady, gentle pulsing, like a heartbeat that she feels through her whole being. There’s nothing strange or alien about the living Force. It’s familiar, almost comforting, something she knows has been part of her since she was a single cell.

Below, she senses the presence of two people, coming closer. She doesn’t have to see them or hear their voices to recognize them: It’s her father, and Leia, seated at one of the wooden benches, in the shade. For a second, Shmi is taken aback. She’d sort of assumed they would avoid each other until Life Day was over, then go their separate ways again. But they’re talking—continuing a conversation, by the sound of it.

“Has Delphine always had trouble hearing?” Leia asks. She’s aware of Del’s condition; it’s come up in passing over the last two years, but they’ve never discussed it at length, as far as Shmi knows.

“Since she was born.”

“An inner ear abnormality can be corrected, you know.”

Kylo makes a vague sound of acknowledgment.

“The procedure is simple. Relatively noninvasive, from what I understand.”

“Is that so,” Kylo says, in a bland voice.

“It could be done on Coruscant,” Leia continues. “I would be happy to—”

“What, front the credits?” Kylo’s tone is sharper now. “You think this is about money?”

Diplomatically, she says, “Resources, more like. I assumed they don’t have the appropriate facilities on your moon. Otherwise, you would’ve had her hearing repaired by now.”

“She doesn’t need to be _repaired._ There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Leia says, and something about her tone grates at Shmi a little. She sounds like she thinks Kylo is being unreasonable. “Medical technology exists for a reason. It’s a tool, that’s all. Your daughter’s hearing is already poor. It will probably degrade over time—”

“But it’s not life-threatening. She has the enhancers, the hand signs—”

“If she had the surgery, she wouldn’t need those things. It’s about making her life easier—”

“You think Hux and I never discussed this?” Kylo demands. His voice is hard. “We considered the options, and we chose the hearing enhancers. I don’t have to justify it to you, of all people. You couldn’t even manage to get here on the right day.”

Leia’s voice flattens. “I was delayed.”

“You promised them you would be here. They were hurt when you didn’t show.”

“I know. And I’ve apologized for that.”

“Your apologies don’t mean anything! When I was a kid, after you shipped me off, how many times did you tell me how _sorry_ you were because something came up and you wouldn’t be able to visit after all? Next time, you said. Always next time. But nothing ever changed.”

“Do you think I don’t regret that?”

Kylo barely seems to hear her. “I don’t want my daughters to deal with that kind of disappointment,” he says. “I won’t allow it. If you want to be in their lives, you have to _be_ in it—don’t jerk them back and forth.”

Leia pauses, and Shmi feels herself go still. Before now, she’s never heard her father suggest that Leia might have an ongoing involvement in Shmi and Delphine’s lives, at least not as long as they live at home. How long has he been considering this? And why didn’t he tell her? She wants to lean over the edge of the rooftop and get a look at his face, guess at what he’s thinking, but she doesn’t dare. He might spot her.

“That’s fair,” Leia says at last, and she sounds like she’s making a concession. “I know the uncertainty was… damaging to our relationship, when you were growing up. It’s not something I want to repeat. And as for Delphine, you’ve made your decision. I respect it. But I want you to remember that I’m available, if there’s anything you need—you, or the girls. Anything at all.”

“Delphine is perfectly healthy,” Kylo tells her, enunciating clearly, like it’s important to him that she understand this. “If she wants to let some droids dig around in her skull when she’s older, that’ll be her choice. But for now, she’s a happy kid. What more could you possibly want?”

“Nothing,” Leia says quietly. “Nothing more than that.”

“I’m not saying it hasn’t been—challenging. But that’s not her fault. I don’t want her thinking that she’s a burden, because she’s not. We adapt to her needs, not the other way around. Do you understand?”

Leia’s voice is soft. “You weren’t a burden to us,” she says, and that brings Shmi up short. “You were our son, and as much as we loved you, we didn’t know how to help you. But we tried, Ben. You have to know that we tried.”

“I know,” Kylo tells her, not unkindly. “You tried everything but accepting what I was. That’s the difference between us.”

Neither of them speaks for what feels like a long time. The silence is tense, but not hostile. Leaves rustle in the wind. Somewhere inside the house, one of the Dameron kids is shouting, and another is laughing, the sound muffled. Eventually, Leia clears her throat.

“The girls,” she says. “They call you Pa. I didn’t realize.”

“What else would they call me? Hux wanted to be ‘dad,’ so there wasn’t much choice,” Kylo replies.

Leia hesitates. Then she says, “Han would’ve liked them. Adored them, probably. Especially Shmi. If he were here—”

“If he were here, they wouldn’t be,” Kylo says, and there’s a sadness in his voice that wasn’t there before. It makes her uneasy, in a way she can’t articulate. Then, softer, he adds: “But—he would’ve liked them. You’re right about that.”

After that, it seems, there isn’t much left to say.

 

\--

 

Kylo always told Shmi that she was a gift from the Force. A miracle. Her conception was biologically unlikely. All things considered, it shouldn’t have been possible. And yet, it happened, just in time to save Hux’s life when he was captured. It was more than a coincidence, Kylo liked to tell her. It was the will of the Force. They had been given another chance to live, Kylo and Hux both, when she was given to them.

That’s the difference between her parents, Shmi thinks: Where one sees a freak accident of biology, the other sees a miracle.

Of course, Hux doesn't understand the Force, not really. He knows it’s real—he’s witnessed its power—but he doesn’t _believe_ in it the way Shmi and Delphine and Kylo do. Having never felt its touch, he doesn’t believe that it has a will of its own. He has no faith in the visions it sends. To Hux, the Force is no different than gravity or electricity: a natural phenomenon, not a living thing.

As far back as Shmi can remember, Hux has been more interested in midi-chlorians and dominant alleles linked to Force sensitivity than in spirituality—the dark side and the light. He wants to categorize the Force, break it down into elements that he can understand. More and more, Shmi wonders if what he really wants is to make sense of _her_ somehow, to reshape her into a form that he recognizes.

She’s afraid that when he looks at her, he sees someone he doesn’t know.

 

\--

 

A while later, when Kylo and Leia have moved on and the coast is clear, Shmi drops down from the rooftop and goes looking for her sister.

She doesn’t know where Delphine found a Dejarik board, but her sister is at one of the picnic tables again, playing against a colossal Wookiee. There’s no heckling knot of onlookers this time; the two of them are alone as Shmi approaches. She hasn’t played this game in ages, personally, but she remembers enjoying it more than holochess, because she liked watching the little holographic monsters grapple on the board.

“You left yourself wide open for that,” Delphine says disapprovingly, as her Ghhhk takes down the opposing K’lor’slug. She looks up with a frown, her brow furrowed. “You’re not letting me win, are you?”

The Wookiee gives a gurgling, noncommittal roar.

It’s then that Delphine notices Shmi. Eagerly, she waves her over to the table. “Shmi, this is Chewbacca,” she says brightly, as if it could be anyone else. The Wookiee rumbles, and Delphine corrects herself. “Oh—just Chewie, I guess. He’s been telling me stories about Pa.”

“Like what?” Shmi asks, edging closer, curious now.

“Chewie and Han Solo used to sneak him into casinos when he was a kid, because he could use the Force to cheat at dice games.”

“That… explains a lot, actually,” Shmi says slowly.

Suddenly, Chewbacca roars at Shmi, but she doesn’t find it at all alarming. There’s something familiar about his speech. She has faint memories from when she was small child: roughhousing with Kylo while he roared and growled in a way that made her shriek with laughter. It had the cadence of a language, but she’d always thought it was made up, just something to add flavor to their little games. In hindsight, she wonders if he wasn’t speaking to her in Shyriiwook.

With surprising gentleness, Chewbacca reaches over and settles a massive paw on her shoulder. Shmi catches herself smiling. Whatever he’s saying, she thinks she knows what he means.

 

\--

 

Sometimes, communicating through hand signs is better than speaking out loud, or even directly through the Force. One method can be overheard; the other gives Shmi a headache after a while. But like this, sitting on top of the picnic table beside her sister after Chewbacca took his leave, Shmi doesn’t have to worry about any of that. They can compare notes privately, though they’re in full view of anyone standing outside.

“Poe is different than I thought he’d be,” Delphine is signing, while they watch him go back and forth, carrying trays of food to the tables outside. “Warmer, I guess. I didn’t expect him to be so friendly.”

“He’s an okay guy,” Shmi replies, with her hands. Then she thinks of the tamales he shared with her, like a peace offering. “Better than okay, if I’m being honest. Weird, right?”

“Pa used to like him,” Delphine says wisely, with a graceful sweep of her hands. “A lot.”

“Well, yeah. They were kids together.” And then it all fell apart. Shmi knows that Kylo once tortured Poe for information, the way he tortured many other people during the war. Sometimes she wishes she could forget, or that he’d never told her at all. But maybe it’s better to be honest about the past, especially the terrible parts. And maybe he’s not the same man he once was, before they were a family.

“That’s not what I mean. When they were kids, Pa really _liked_ him. And it made him mad, back then, because he got stupid around Poe, the way you get stupid around Uma.”

Shmi swivels her head around when she catches her sister’s meaning. “What? No, you’re making that up.”

Delphine’s hand signs are adamant: “I’m not! He thinks about it sometimes, now that we’re here. That’s how I know.”

“Doubtful,” Shmi signs, dismissively. And yet, if she lets herself imagine it, she supposes it could be possible. Poe was a little older than her dad, undoubtedly a hotshot from way back. He must’ve seemed quite grown-up and appealing to Ben Solo, at least for a while. It would’ve been perfectly natural for him to have a crush on Poe Dameron—him, and everyone else.

All the same, it feels strange to Shmi. She knows it’s childish, but she has trouble believing that her dad has ever really wanted anyone but her father. Certainly, Hux is the only man Kylo has ever loved. Most of the time, he speaks as if his life began when Shmi was born, when they became a family. That’s not true, of course. He’d lived quite a lot before she came along, and she ought to remember that.

Dusk is falling, the sky a bruised purple, when Rey beckons them over with a wave of her hand. Behind her, the others are gathering around the Life Day tree, where Poe and Finn have hauled out a big crate.

Delphine glances at Shmi, who shrugs and gets up. They approach the tree cautiously, step by step, though Delphine is plainly curious; Shmi gives Finn a wide berth, remembering the first day.

“What’s going on?” Del asks, peering at the crate.

“We’re decorating the tree,” Poe tells her. “This is the best part. The kids loved it when they were little, and it’s still fun after you grow up.” The two girls look at him blankly, and he gives them an odd smile, like he thinks they’re being funny. “Well, what are you waiting for? Come on, pick something out—”

“Oh, no,” Shmi says quickly. “That’s okay. I’ll just watch—”

“It’s not optional,” Poe says, his voice bright, ushering her forward. Delphine requires less encouragement to step forward. Most of the other guests are jostling around the crate, which Shmi sees is full of little trinkets on hooks. “Everybody has to hang one. Don’t worry, only some of them are rigged to explode.”

Shmi musters a weak laugh. In the end, she chooses a random bauble from the crate—a cute, stylized representation of a porg wearing a little hat—and carefully hangs it on the nearest branch. Then she retreats to the buffet table, abandoned for a moment while everyone is distracted by tree decorating, and watches Delphine take her turn. When her sister is done, she finds Kylo, who’s standing off to the side with Chewie. Shmi can’t guess what they’ve been talking about. Maybe they haven’t been speaking at all.

A few minutes later, when Finn approaches the table alone, her body tenses instinctively. A blend of guilt and apprehension twists in her gut as she remembers how he looked at her the first day, right after he pulled her off Felix. She tries to look casual now—or, at least, like she hasn’t selfishly eaten almost half of the little sugar-dusted puffs arranged on a green platter—knowing the act won’t hold up under scrutiny.

“You’re making me nervous, kid,” Finn says, by way of greeting, as he ladles himself a cup of punch.

“I am?”

“It’s a party, and you’re standing off by yourself for no reason. Doing recon or something?”

“This seemed like a good spot for me, strategically,” Shmi says, nodding guiltily toward the platters of food.

Finn snorts. “I see. Not a bad idea, actually.” He picks up one of the remaining sugar puffs. “Did you demolish these by yourself?”

She coughs into her hand. “I don’t even know what those are. I just know they’re good. I couldn’t stop—it’s like a sickness.”

“All of Poe’s food is like that,” Finn tells her, gravely. He shoves the little pastry in his mouth. “Well, I guess we’re accomplices now. I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Nodding a little, Shmi tries to figure out what to do with her hands now that she’s not using them to compulsively eat party food. She has no idea how to act when she’s alone with Finn and he’s being disconcertingly nice. In the end, she clasps them behind her back. “So, ah—thanks for having us. Me especially. I mean, after what happened,” she says eventually, babbling, unable to stop. She glances at him. “Don’t hold anything I did against Delphine, okay? She’s not like that. You don’t have to worry about her.”

“You think I’m judging her based on you?”

“Well…” Shmi gives him a look, eyebrows raised, because there’s the whole matter of Hux, hanging unspoken between them. He’s certainly judged her, at least in part, based on her father. Why should it be different with Delphine? She rubs at her nose with one hand. “I just wanted her to have a good time here, you know? She’s never been off-world or anything, and she was so excited. But I keep messing it up for her.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Finn says, charitably. He pauses. “Felix told me what happened, you know—what he said that set you off. And I get it. I do. Whatever he is to us, he’s your dad. We can’t expect you to…” He seems to stop himself.

“What?” Shmi’s voice is tense, her jaw inexplicably tight.

Finn just shakes his head. “Seventeen years is a long time,” he says. “You’d think it would be long enough to process everything—catalogue, move on. But I still keep seeing you and looking for him. It’s the damndest thing.”

“He’s my dad,” she says, echoing him—like it’s a simple thing, but it’s never been simple. She isn’t sure if she’s reminding him or herself.

“Yeah,” Finn says quietly. “He is.”

She opens her mouth, but before she can speak again, somebody hits a switch and the tree comes to life, instantly flooded with multicolored lights. It’s even prettier than Shmi would’ve expected, the illumination surprisingly delicate, not at all harsh. Colors shine across the grass, throwing strange shadows. A cheer goes up from the gathered people, and elsewhere, music kicks on: loud and festive, all unfamiliar instruments and a gruff, growling language.

“Say, do you understand any of this music?” Finn asks suddenly.

She looks over at him. The lights are reflected in his dark eyes. “No,” she says.

“Damn. Me neither.” He smiles then, disarmingly, in a way that makes her want to smile back. “I never did learn to speak Wookiee.”

 

\--

 

For another hour, Shmi drifts around the party, pocketing snacks and narrowly avoiding getting roped into any party games. She prefers to watch from a safe distance—less chance of disaster that way. And when she notices Delphine and Kylo near the tree, talking to Leia, all three of them illuminated by the multicolored lights, she thinks that maybe it wasn’t a waste to come here, after all.

Out of nowhere, Clauda breezes up to her, a sparkling pink concoction in each hand. She offers one to Shmi, who accepts it gingerly, then takes her by the arm and steers her away from the heart of the activity, where some carved wooden seats are unoccupied on the grass.

 _Girl time,_ Clauda calls it, sweetly with a wink, and that’s not something Shmi has much practical experience with. The only girls she spends much quality time with are her little sister and Phasma, if that counts. In fact, before this trip, she hasn’t been around many people her own age; she doesn’t seem to mix well with them, usually. Growing up, her most frequent companions were always her parents and Obie, or else people her parents knew, like the local barkeep, or their regular customers, or Kylo’s smuggler acquaintances. It’s funny—she never really thought of that before.

The drink Clauda gave her is sweet and bright, liquid candy, nothing like the Corellian brandy that Hux sometimes lets her have a measure of when he’s in an indulgent mood. It tastes so good that she drinks half of it without thinking, and it goes to her head a bit. Clauda does all the hard work for her, which seems kind. All Shmi has to do is sit close to her and listen to the other girl’s lively, ongoing commentary about the party: _See, the carols are basically impossible unless you_ _’re a Wookiee, so you just have to do your best and try not to choke on your tongue. Mateo’s actually pretty good, though. Hey, look, Snap’s about to lose to my dad at arm wrestling—it’s a Life Day tradition. So you really never had tamales until you came here?_

It’s nice, Shmi thinks, so much better than she thought it would be, especially after the mess that was the first day. She catches herself idly wishing that Hux were here, too, so he could see that these people aren’t so bad after all. But that can never happen, she remembers, with a pang of regret. This is something they can never share. She slumps down in her seat a little, swirling the dregs of her drink around in the glass.

“Can I ask you something?” Clauda asks, leaning in and dropping her voice.

A weird little rush goes through Shmi. She’s sort of flustered by Clauda’s proximity; this close, she can smell a faint, floral perfume, mingled with sweat. “Yeah,” she says, her heart doing a slow somersault. She quickly swallows the last of the pink concoction. “Sure.”

“What are they really like? Your parents, I mean.”

“My…” Shmi pauses, confused. She thinks she misunderstood. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard all about them from my dads, and Leia, and Rey. And I’ve read about Hux, the way he grew up and the things he did. But I wondered what they’re like—you know, at home.”

“I don’t know. I mean—they’re just—they’re my dads,” Shmi says lamely. But she doesn’t know how to explain it better than that, at least not in a way that Clauda will believe. She isn’t sure what the other girl wants to hear. “What do you think they’re like?”

Clauda laughs a little, and Shmi can’t tell if she’s being made fun of or not. “I don’t know. That’s why I asked,” she says. Then she sips her drink again, looking thoughtful. “You know, before you came, I had all these ideas about what you’d be like. You and your sister. But you’re not anything like I thought.”

Shmi sits up a little, angling away from Clauda. “And how’s that?”

“Oh, you know.” Clauda gestures airily, encompassing Shmi’s entire body. “I mean, your dads being who they are, we thought you might be a little… different. Intense. And you are, but you’re not—”

“Not what?” There’s an edge to Shmi’s voice now, one she can’t quite dull. “Not evil?”

“I didn’t say that,” Clauda says quickly. “And you’re not. You’re pretty normal, actually, all things considered.”

“And that’s a surprise?”

Clauda nudges her gently, like it’s all in good fun. “Come on, you know what I mean,” she says. “After everything I’d heard, I just didn’t think you’d be—you know, fun to be around, once you relaxed. And Delphine’s a really sweet kid.” She smiles. “My dads are still in shock. I think they were worried about you.”

“Worried?” Shmi feels stupid, just parroting whatever Clauda says, but she’s struggling to process what she’s hearing. There was never any reason to worry about her or Delphine. They’ve always been safe, protected, with their fathers. Whatever Leia and the others think of Hux, Shmi is surprised to consider that they might think he would mistreat his daughters.

“Well, yeah. Leia and Rey, too. You disappeared, and nobody knew what happened after that. Who knew how you’d turn out, growing up with Kylo Ren and General Hux?” She speaks the names in a kind of goofy, exaggerated way, like she’s talking about people who aren’t quite real.

“They said that to you?” Shmi asks. Her pulse is thudding faster, like her body knows something that her mind doesn’t. “That they think we’ve had some kind of—weird, horrible life?”

“Not in so many words,” Clauda says, shrugging, but that’s a lie. Shmi can sense it. She’s not an especially adept mind reader—she lacks a delicate touch—but something like anger is stirring inside of her, which heightens her power. The dark side is always there to help her, in moments like this.

Lightly, she skims the forefront of Clauda’s thoughts. The other girl is thinking of her parents, and Rey, and a family meeting that happened after Leia extended the invitation. Finn, Poe and Rey all warned Clauda and her siblings about the impending visit. Shmi hears their voices, echoing faintly over each other, the words snatched from Clauda’s memories: _They_ _’re Rey’s cousins, so we’re going to welcome them. If they seem strange, don’t hold it against them, okay? Think of how they grew up. It’s not their fault—they didn’t choose their parents._

“We’re normal,” she says now, and part of her knows that Clauda probably won’t believe it. Her hands are shaking. She feels gutted. All this time, the whole Dameron clan has been goggling at her like an animal in the zoo, wondering if she’s tame. Even Leia has been silently judging Shmi and Delphine, to see if they’re tainted by their fathers’ crimes. Shmi was just too stupid to see it before now. “My dads aren’t these—cartoon bad guys, or whatever you think they are. We live like regular people.”

As if from a distance, she hears Clauda say, “But you get it, right? I mean, you know them better than anyone. I’m sure you can imagine how it must’ve seemed to everyone else.”

“Yeah,” Shmi says slowly. Blood whooshes dully in her ears, in time with her pulse. She feels far away from herself. “Yeah, I get it.”

Suddenly, she knocks the glass out of Clauda’s hand, using the Force. It shatters when it hits the ground, with a bright, sharp sound. The pieces glitter under the party lights.

“Hey!” Clauda looks up at her in shock. “What was that for?”

Standing, Shmi asks, “Is that what you were expecting? Is this how you pictured me? Well, if you wanted to see the Starkiller’s daughter do something fucked up, you’ve got it.” She throws the chair she was just sitting in, sends it soaring over the grass. When it slams into the ground, breaking apart, she feels it: vibrations traveling along a thousand invisible strings, all of them connected to her through the Force. “It’s okay—I don’t mind proving you right. I’m my fathers’ daughter. That’s what I am. But what the hell are you supposed to be?”

Shmi is yelling by the end, her breath coming hard. Clauda is stunned, her face pale and her eyes huge. She looks afraid. Slowly, Shmi becomes aware of the silence that has fallen around them—no chatter, just the incongruously jolly Life Day music piping from unseen speakers. She can feel all the eyes on her, and her skin prickles painfully. She doesn’t turn to face them; she can’t bear to.

Without needing to look, she senses Finn and Poe making a beeline toward her, like they expect her to jump on Clauda the way she did Felix. They’re not wrong about her, she thinks. None of them are. This is just what she does, inevitably.

She feels Delphine pressing insistently at her mind, practically begging for access, but she turns away stiffly. Before she can think of another stupid thing to do, Shmi hurries around the other side of the house, away from the party and into the dusk.

 

\--

 

“Absolutely not,” Hux said, in that infuriating, authoritative tone that never failed to make Shmi grind her teeth. She couldn’t stand it when he used _the general_ _’s_ voice on her, like he expected her to just salute and do what he wanted—and he was using it more and more lately. “For the last time, Shmi, we’ve been through this. You aren’t going anywhere near those people.”

Rain was lashing the window as they faced each other in the sitting room. They were the only ones at home: Kylo and Delphine had been out running errands all day, and Shmi had bounced restlessly around the apartment, plucking up the courage to approach Hux again, polishing her argument. This time, she was determined to convince him.

It was only a month before Life Day, according to the standard calendar, and Shmi wanted to go so badly that it was almost a taste in her mouth. She had a feeling of urgency now, getting stronger by the day—the sense that this was her only chance, and if she missed it, such an opportunity would never come again. It wasn’t rational, she knew that, but her feelings rarely were.

She had latched onto the idea that she didn’t know herself, not fully, and she never would until she got to know the other part of her family. When they quarreled about it, Hux like to trot out how Kylo’s family had kept him in the dark about his heritage, like it was evidence of their wickedness. But he refused to admit that he was doing basically the same thing to Shmi now, out of sheer pettiness. Her heritage belonged to her. She had a right to it—and he had no right to keep her from it.

But he wouldn’t hear it, not every other time she’d tried to bring it up, and not now.

“Why are you so threatened by her?” Shmi asked, knowing it would wound his pride, wanting the reaction. Even now, he seemed to think of Leia as his rival—if not in war, than for his daughters’ affections. “You’re making a problem where there isn’t one. She just wants to meet us.”

Hux’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what she told you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She lied to your father, and she’ll lie to you. Don’t be naive, Shmi.”

“The way she treated Pa was a mistake. She knows that. She’s learned from it, and she wants to make it right—”

“I suppose that’s why she handed you off to strangers, rather than care for you herself,” Hux said venomously. Shmi’s face burned hot—embarrassed that what he said was true, embarrassed and suddenly angry. “She can turn her back on anyone at a moment’s notice, if it furthers her goals. She is loyal only to herself. The sooner you realize that, the better. I don’t want to see you hurt—”

“You just don’t want me to be loyal to anyone but you,” she spat, almost on reflex. She’d been stewing on this line of reasoning for weeks now, letting it fester, and now it was spilling out, too fast for her to even think of stopping. “That’s what you’re scared of. I’m not one of your stormtroopers, you can’t just reprogram me when you don’t like the way I think—”

He looked briefly, genuinely disturbed by the comparison, before he smoothed his expression over again. “You have no idea,” he was saying, shaking his head. “Everything I’ve done for the last seventeen years has been for you, and now—”

“I didn’t ask to be born!” she shouted, loudly enough that it scraped her throat. The knickknacks on a nearby shelf rattled. Distantly, she heard the rumble of a speeder on the the street. “So what if you took care of me when I was a kid? You’re _supposed_ to do that. I don’t owe you some debt. You didn’t even want me!”

“Shmi—”

“You only had me because they would’ve killed you otherwise. It had nothing to do with me.”

“It was more complicated than that, and you know it—”

“Who would want you for a father, anyway? You’re a fucking murderer!”

The words spilled out before she could stop them, before she could even think about them clearly. She wasn’t sure where they came from, only that she immediately wanted to snatch them back. But it was too late—Hux had stopped cold. For an instant, he looked stunned, like she’d hit him, before his whole demeanor hardened. His eyes were dark and sharp, cutting into her.

“You’ve traded one killer for another, that’s all,” Hux said, and his voice had gone as thin and cold as a sheet of ice. She could sense his pulse slamming, the way his breathing had picked up. “And you don’t even see it. That woman is a master manipulator—”

Shmi felt herself bristle again, her regret quickly sharpening into defensiveness. “That woman is my grandmother—”

“Regrettably, yes! And it means _nothing_ to her. It’s not affection she has for you, it’s obligation. Vanity. Before you were born, you were just a bargaining chip to her, not a child. I’ve tried to protect you from that.” He was shouting now, his neck reddening, but rather than make her quail, his anger seemed to fuel hers. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d yelled at her like this—maybe he never had. “You played right into her hand, you selfish child—”

“I hate you,” Shmi said savagely, her voice thick. “Stars, I hate you—”

She saw Hux’s mouth moving, but she couldn’t hear him: There was a rushing in her ears, like wind, and then a sudden splintering noise that resounded through her skull, and then silence. She felt abruptly dizzy, the room tilting in front of her.

The holophotos on the end table had shattered, without being touched; translucent hologlass dusted the floor.

Hux was half twisted away from her, his shoulders braced. From this angle, she saw that he was bleeding from two jagged slices on the right side of his face, along his forehead and cheekbone. He had one hand cupped above his eye, to keep the blood from running into it, but it welled up between his fingers in time with his pulse, inescapably red.

A few heartbeats passed before Shmi realized she had done that. In the wild rush of her anger, she’d smashed the holophotos and cut Hux’s face. She’d hurt him, without even touching him.

Slowly, he looked up at her, one hand still over his eye. He looked almost as stunned as Shmi felt. She hadn’t seen him like this—pale and shocked, like the ground had opened up beneath him—since the night Rey came, when he’d hauled opened the bedroom door and found Shmi and Delphine hiding in their room, while they ought to have been far away.

There was a clatter on the stairs outside, and then Kylo was rushing through the door, rain dripping from his coat, Delphine just behind him. The speeder Shmi heard must’ve been the two of them pulling into the garage—and naturally, they both would’ve sensed that sudden, violent disturbance in the Force.

“What happened?” Kylo demanded, looking between Shmi and Hux, both of whom stood rooted to the spot. Behind him, Del had stopped in the doorway, as if unwilling to cross the threshold. Her eyes were locked on Hux. She looked more confused by the blood than afraid, like she couldn’t quite process what she was seeing.

Shmi didn’t know where to begin, how to explain. Her mouth opened; she sucked in a breath. “I…”

 _I_ _’m sorry,_ she meant to say, but somehow, the words became lodged in her throat, hard to swallow around. _I_ _’m so sorry, Daddy, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t—_

But she couldn’t make herself speak. Even if she could, it wouldn’t matter.

Kylo crossed the room in a few long, purposeful strides, careless of the mud on his boots. He took Hux by the elbow and steered him toward the couch. “Did the glass hit your eye?” he asked urgently, reaching for Hux’s face, as if to inspect the damage.

“No,” said Hux, attempting to pull away from Kylo’s ministrations. He sat on the edge of the couch, slouching forward uncharacteristically. “And I’m sure it’s not that deep, get off me—”

“Hold still and let me look—”

“Just get me a cloth, will you?”

“Obie!” Kylo shouted. He glanced up and around, his eyes skipping over Shmi, as if he didn’t see her at all. “Where’s the droid when you need her?”

“At her charging station.” Hux was beginning to sound annoyed. “She’s in low-power mode. Now will you get me a damned cloth? You’re no good to me like this.”

Shmi felt Delphine brush past her, hurrying for the kitchen, probably to reactivate Obie. That snapped Shmi out of her daze, at least enough for her to walk mechanically into the refresher and grab a clean washcloth out of the cabinet. She didn’t remember deciding to do that; it was like her body had determined that her brain wasn’t allowed to call any more shots tonight.

When she approached the couch, offering the cloth to Kylo, the look in his eyes made her stop short. He was still kneeling in front of Hux, attempting to wipe away some of the blood with his sleeve. “I’ve got it,” Kylo dismissed her, and a sudden wave of cold washed over her skin.

“I just—” She was still holding out the cloth, almost helplessly, silently begging him to accept it.

“You don’t have to do anything. I’ve got it,” he said firmly, impatient, and the rejection stung badly enough to make her eyes water. She heard what he didn’t say: _You_ _’ve done enough damage for one night. You shouldn’t be here._ He looked away from her. “We’ll talk later, Shmi.”

She couldn’t speak, crushed under the weight of his disappointment. In the end, she just nodded shakily, bunched up the cloth in her hand, and backed out of the sitting room, wishing she could disappear completely.

 

\--

 

Shmi and Hux didn’t speak for three full days.

She kept thinking of the expression on his face in the moment he realized what she’d done: horror, pure and simple. And she could barely look at him now, because all she could see were the neat lines of sutures that held the edges of the wounds together. Bacta was a rare commodity out here, and obscenely expensive, so he would have to heal on his own. He’d probably scar.

Somebody swept up the hologlass—Obie, probably. The pictures were gone. Nobody talked about it.

Life went on, a little differently than before. She was afraid to talk to Hux, in a way she’d never been—afraid of breaking something else. And he didn’t seem inclined to speak to her, either. They maneuvered carefully around each other, at home and in the garage. Already, it was hard for Shmi to remember it ever being different between them.

Kylo had told her certain things about his childhood: how his parents became afraid of his power, and eventually of Kylo himself, because he couldn’t be controlled. They sent him away, because he broke things without meaning to, important things—and later on, he broke things on purpose, just because he could, just to see what happened. By the time he gained the ability to control himself, he didn’t want to anymore. And then it was much too late to go back.

Since she was small, just beginning to explore her own power, Kylo had insisted that there was nothing she could do that would frighten him away. He wouldn’t turn away from her. She believed him, because he understood where her power came from. He knew what it felt like when it rushed through her—how it sometimes felt too big for her body, overwhelming, like she’d burst out of her own skin. The two of them were the same.

But not Hux. He’d never touched the Force. He couldn’t understand her the way that Kylo did, and that would inevitably make him afraid.

She didn’t want Hux to be afraid of her. It was the last thing in the galaxy that she wanted. But now that she’d given him a reason, now that she’d hurt him in her anger, she didn’t see how the damage could be repaired.

A week later, when she was working on her hoverboard in the garage, after-hours, Kylo came to stand beside the bay. Outside, rain hissed against the roof and windows; it was full blue dark out there.

“If you still want to go,” Kylo said eventually, “I’ll take  you.”

For a moment, Shmi was too surprised to answer. She’d wanted so badly to hear those words—and yet, now that she’d gotten what she wanted, it was soured. She didn’t feel happy at the prospect, like she’d thought she would. Mostly, she felt tired.

But considering how hard she’d fought for this, and what she’d done to Hux, choosing not to go would be like admitting defeat—and that was something she’d never learned how to do. At this point, she _had_ to go, or all this would be for nothing, and her parents would never take her seriously again. There didn’t seem to be a graceful way to back out.

“Of course I want to go,” Shmi told her father.

The next night, she informed Leia, and they began to make arrangements.

 

\--

 

Her feet move mechanically, jogging along the path to the main road, all the way back to the port. Usually, physical exertion helps clear her head, but it doesn’t work this time, not the way she hoped it would.

In the streets, people are celebrating, laughing and drinking and chanting as they wait for the fireworks to begin. Their happiness pisses Shmi off, in a way she knows it shouldn’t. All the music and singing are a meaningless clamor to her; she can’t even appreciate the multicolored lights in the Life Day trees. She just shoves through the crowd, her vision tunneling as she makes her way back to the shuttle. The night is warm, and her skin is tacky with sweat by the time she gets there.

The shuttle hatch doesn’t have an access code. Rather, it’s keyed to her retina. Delphine, Kylo and Hux also have their retinas programmed into the security system. A brief scan of her eye, and she ducks inside.

The dark, silent interior is a relief. For half a minute, she stands in the middle of the common area, catching her breath, willing her pulse to slow. But the anger is still sparking along her spine, burning low in her chest. She feels like she’s been had, like Rey and the Damerons have made a fool of her. They wouldn’t want anything to do with her unless she unhooked herself from her parents, that much is clear now. She hates the idea that she might be a decent person _despite_ the people who raised her, as if her fathers—and Hux especially—have been holding her back somehow, an obstacle to be overcome.

And then she went and proved them all right.

Impulsively, Shmi kicks at a chair, which is bolted to the floor. It hurts enough to make her gasp, but the pain focuses her on a single point. What does Clauda Dameron know about anything?

The anger slowly bleeds into exhaustion, and embarrassment. She made a scene, again. She’s pretty sure she ruined Life Day for Delphine, and there’s no making up for that. She has no idea what Kylo will say when she has to face him again, but he’ll be disappointed. She’s just grateful he didn’t follow her when she bolted from the party. Maybe he stayed to do damage control—which is kind of funny, for him.

Looking back, Shmi is confused by her own reaction to Clauda. She doesn’t know why she keeps getting so upset on Hux’s behalf, like he needs her to defend him, like he even deserves it. And yet, her father is like an exposed nerve: When someone prods at it, she lashes out instinctively. It makes no sense to her.

She slumps onto the low couch and calls for lights at twenty percent. For a few minutes, she just sits there bonelessly, wishing she could melt into the couch and disappear. And then, as she stares at the ceiling, she remembers the hidden compartment—the one she’s never had a chance to investigate. She bites her lip, considering, before her desire for a distraction gets the better of her.

Shmi unfurls herself from the couch and crouches in front of a particular floor panel. It doesn't take much effort to pry the panel loose. She knows what’s hidden in underneath, more or less, though she’s never seen it firsthand. Her fathers have explained that a wealth of information is contained in this shuttle, countless documents that would tell Shmi and her sister anything they might need to know while living on their own.

As she expected, the compartment is full of datachips, more than she can count at a glance, all meticulously labeled and divided into categories. She thumbs through a few at random: _Hyperdrive maintenance and repair. Basic lightsaber forms — Shii-Cho. Treating blaster burns._

One label jumps out at her: _Shmi 1._ It appears to be the first in a sequence of related datachips. She notices others labeled for Delphine, and still others featuring both of their names. She can’t imagine what kind of specialized information might be stored on those chips. Impulsively, she shoves _Shmi 1_ into the terminal.

It loads quickly. Skimming the list of files, she’s surprised to see that there are no schematics, no maps or diagrams or text-based documents of any kind. It’s all holos. They have odd names, unlike the instructional datachips: _Does the Force care about your sabacc hand?_ Presumably, Kylo recorded that one.

 _If you try illicit spice, you_ _’ll die, and I’ll be disappointed._ That one must be Hux’s—he’s always going on about the dangers of the mysterious, potentially brain-melting spices coming out of Hutt space. He’s clearly worried about what she might get up to unsupervised, so much that it makes Shmi wonder if he has some firsthand experience.

 _Happy birthday, Shmi._ The title seems almost suspiciously straightforward compared to the others. Shmi selects it.

Right away, she can tell that this holo was recorded in the garage, and in the evening, based on the lighting. During the day, clear natural light washes through the front windows, but at night, the yellow-tinged lamps come on, making her father’s hair look redder than it does by sunlight.

Shmi is struck by how much younger Hux looks in the holo than the last time she saw him. He has fewer lines around his eyes, for one thing, and fewer touches of silver in his carefully-maintained beard; his reading glasses aren’t clipped to the front of his coveralls the way they always are now. The differences are small, she supposes, but taken all together like this, they leap out at her. He’s seated on a stool by the workbench.

A quick check of the data properties shows that this recording was made twelve years ago. Shmi would’ve been about six at the time, and Delphine only a year old, still a baby.

“Have you got it?” Hux asks.

“Hold on,” comes Kylo’s voice, from somewhere out of the frame. “I don’t think it’s recording yet—”

“Yes, it is. The light is on. Come on, get over here—”

Kylo laughs quietly. “Don’t worry, I’ll edit the beginning out. Just say what you planned on saying.”

A moment later, when Kylo ducks into the frame, he doesn’t look so different than he does today. He’s not that much younger than Hux—there are only six or seven years between them, Shmi thinks—but Kylo is always teasing Hux for being an old man, and Hux is surprisingly sensitive about it, though he pretends not to be. He takes a seat on another stool beside Hux, and the two of them turn their attention to the holorecorder.

Hux draws himself up straighter, clears his throat, and announces, “Shmi, today is your birthday, or at least our best guess. If it’s any day _other_ than your birthday, stop watching and be patient.”

“We’re sorry we can’t be there with you,” Kylo says, looking directly into the holorecorder. He’s smiling faintly, as if to soften his words. Oddly, Shmi does feel a bit like he’s really looking at her. “But we left you some presents, so you can imagine we’re there if you want. Check your bunk—there’s a compartment in the wall, below the bed frame. There’s a little gift in there from each of us. I think you’ll like them.”

“You’ll also find vacuum-sealed cake ingredients,” Hux adds. “Yes, yes, I know you’ve rarely been subjected to rehydrated food. But it needed to last in storage, and it’s really not bad.”

Beside him, Kylo looks skeptical, but he doesn’t comment. “If you don’t remember how to bake a cake, we made a holo for that. Your dad demonstrated for the recording, and the results were edible. If he can manage it, you’ll have no problems.” 

Hux’s mouth twitches, something between a smile and a grimace, though he pretends not to have heard the comment. Kylo’s not wrong, though: Hux never cooks if he can help it, so his repertoire is limited. “Now, if you’ve already found and opened your presents, I suppose I can’t blame you,” Hux goes on. “But that means you still need to work on following directions, because they’re very clearly labeled.” His tone is serious, but he’s smiling with his eyes, so she knows he’s teasing. “You may be a little old for the gift I picked out, but I hope you enjoy it regardless. Happy birthday, darling.”

“Make it a good one, okay? We love you,” Kylo says.

He smiles, so warmly, and when the recording stops, Shmi’s eyes are oddly wet. She’s a little confused by her own response. That holo is supposed to make her feel better on what would’ve likely been her first birthday without her parents—and yet, watching it now, knowing they’re alive and well, she’s choked up. Though she’s always known about the instructional holos, it’s almost overwhelming to realize that they’ve tried to make her birthday special, like always, even if they’re not physically present. She closes the holo.

Skimming the other files again, Shmi notices one that was recorded just a few weeks ago. It’s untitled. 

Strange—she hadn’t realized her dads were still adding to this collection. She loads the holo.

Hux is seated at the kitchen table. It’s dim, only one small lamp on; the time stamp suggests he made this recording in the middle of the night, probably when the rest of the family was asleep. The moment Shmi notices the half-healed cuts on his face, she knows this holo was made shortly after their fight. Her insides clench, involuntarily bracing against whatever he might have to say to her.

“I was just thinking of something that happened when you were little,” he says, quietly, probably so he won’t wake anyone. “You were only about seven. I doubt you remember. The garage was closed that day. Your father was out running errands, and I was working. You and Delphine were upstairs with Obie—but I heard what sounded suspiciously like your voices, coming from outside. I found the two of you around the back, in the rain, stomping around in a mud puddle. You were both laughing.”

Come to think of it, Shmi does remember that day. She had wanted to play outside, but Obie said it was too rainy. However, Shmi had already learned that it was easy to sneak past Obie while she was in sleep mode at her charging station, which happened at the same time each afternoon. Delphine was meant to be napping during that period, while Shmi entertained herself for an hour. That was usually how it went.

At two years old, Delphine wasn’t always the best playmate. But Shmi delighted in having a little companion, so she trundled her sister out of bed and helped her toddle downstairs, both of them barefoot. Outside, rain hissed against the ground and drummed against the garage’s metal siding. Everything smelled wet and green; the ground was cold under Shmi’s feet, but not unpleasantly so. She and Delphine quickly found a sizable mud puddle at the edge of the cracked duracrete and began happily smearing muck all over themselves. It wasn’t long before Hux found them. 

“You’d made an absolute mess. Naturally, I was annoyed,” the recorded Hux was saying. “I hurried out into the rain, and you looked up at me with this big smile, like it hadn’t occurred to you that you might be in trouble. I thought, ‘Stars above, she’s nothing like me when I was that age.’ And I realized I was grateful for that. There you were, playing in the mud with your sister, perfectly happy. When you looked at me, your first reaction was to smile. What more could I ask for?”

Thinking back, Shmi recalls that Hux didn’t scold her then, though he would’ve been within his rights. He just scooped Delphine off the ground, smearing mud all down his front in the process, and herded Shmi up the narrow stairs. Only when she was back in the apartment did Shmi realize how cold she’d actually been: soaked through, mud caked into every crease of skin, matted in her hair.

In the refresher, Hux immediately peeled off Shmi and Delphine’s wet, muddy clothes and put the two of them into a hot bath. Shmi had complained about this treatment—at seven, she considered herself quite independent and could bathe on her own, thank you very much—but Hux dumped her into the tub anyway. The water went almost instantly black with dirt, so he had to drain the tub once he’d rinsed the girls off, then fill it again so he could wash them properly.

Shmi and Delphine had to sit in the tub for a long time, growing impatient as Hux scrubbed at their skin, then endlessly rinsed their hair, all the while lecturing about how they could’ve caught their death of cold. Eventually, he allowed Shmi to clamber out of the tub, sloshing water over the side as she did so, and wrapped her securely in a towel.

For a moment, he’d given her an odd look, exasperated and fond, before he sighed and turned to collect Delphine. When Shmi wandered out of the refresher, feeling very warm and very clean, she saw that she’d tracked muddy footprints all over.

“I never told you much about my father,” Hux goes on eventually. He’s not quite looking into the holorecorder, his eyes focused on something that Shmi can’t see. “He was… a difficult person, to say the least. Impossible to please—it’s a cliche. Everything I knew about parenting, I learned from him. I assumed it was an awful, miserable business that I was better off avoiding. Then I had you, and you were perfect. You took me completely by surprise.” He glances into the recorder. “I’d call you and Delphine my greatest achievements, except I recognize that I had very little to do with how you turned out. You’re the person you are despite me, not because of me. And I’m grateful for that, too.”

That’s what Clauda said, more or less, and what the whole extended Dameron family has apparently been thinking all this time. Just a few weeks ago, Shmi might’ve agreed: She didn’t want anything to do with her father, and if she happened to be a decent person, it was no thanks to him. But now, oddly, it doesn’t seem quite so simple.

“From the beginning, I was determined to be better at this than my father was. It seemed possible once. I suppose you’ll decide how badly I karked it up. But no matter what you think of me, I hope you know that I _wanted_ to be better for you. I wanted—” Hux goes quiet, a strange, almost pained expression crossing his face. “It doesn’t really matter what I wanted. Especially if I didn’t succeed.”

Hux is silent for half a minute. “You saved my life, you know,” he says at last. “It’s strange to think of it that way now, but you did. And you’ve kept saving me, ever since.” He scrubs a hand over his face, coughs a little to clear his throat. When he looks into the holorecorder again, his pale eyes are shiny. “I don’t pretend to know much about the Force. It’s never spoken to me. But if there’s any part of me that remains when the rest is gone, even the smallest piece…” He takes a breath. “It’ll be with you and your sister. I have loved you beyond all limits. Whatever happens, I am so proud of you, my darling.”

A moment later, the recording ends.

She sits in silence for a long minute, struggling to process what she just saw. Suddenly, a loud pinging from the cockpit startles her. Shmi recognizes the sound: The shuttle’s sensors have detected movement nearby. She assumes it’s her father, or her sister—but when she checks the viewscreen, it’s neither of them.

Leia.

Shmi hesitates for a full minute before she activates the door. It slides open with a hiss, and then she and Leia stand facing each other in the low light.

They just look at each other for a moment, until Leia asks, “Permission to come aboard?”

Her father would say no, absolutely not, never. But he’s not here. Warily, Shmi nods and steps aside so Leia can enter. As far back as she can remember, this shuttle has been a kind of sacred place, a refuge where they could hide from the people who would do them harm. It’s strange to suddenly stand here with Leia, one of the people she grew up hiding from.

“You’re missing the party,” Leia comments.

“It doesn’t matter,” Shmi says, somewhat gruffly. In the back of her mind, she thinks it’s for the best. Delphine will have a better time this way, without her. “I don’t care. Is there a reason you came?”

“I wanted to give your present to you before Life Day is over.”

Shaking her head, Shmi says, “I don’t want it.”

“You don’t know what it is yet.”

“I said I don’t care.” She’s being petulant, childish, and she knows it. Part of her is embarrassed, but it doesn’t matter. She’ll never see these people again. She doesn’t want to, and neither do they.

“Why did you come here, then, if you didn’t want to take part? Ben—” Leia pauses, corrects herself. “Your father said you wanted to come very badly.”

“He said that?” Shmi glances up in surprise. “You talked to him?”

“Yes, tonight. And he knows I’m here—it was his suggestion.” That surprises Shmi, but reaching out with the Force, she doesn’t sense any deception. Leia’s telling the truth: Kylo sent her. “So what changed?”

“I don’t know.”

“You seemed excited to meet everyone, in your messages.”

“I was! I just—” Shmi grimaces. Her skin prickles with shame, and her insides squirm guiltily. “I wreck things. Half the time, I don’t know why. Sometimes I want to break things, just to know what it feels like. I throw a tool, or I kick a wall, or I say something I don’t mean. And the second it’s over, the second I see what I did, I hate the way I feel. I hate how I make other people feel. But I never remember that until the next time, when it’s too late. It’s like something’s broken in my head.” She sucks in a breath, feeling like something sharp is lodged under her ribs. “That’s all I’ve been doing since we dropped ship—breaking things and then wondering why. I don’t know why I’m _like_ this.”

“Your father was like that, too, when he was your age.”

“I know. He tells me all the time.” The turmoil that surges through her sometimes is nothing new to him. He can take the full force of it—of her—without ever looking away. He isn’t afraid of her, and that’s always made her feel safe. “He says it’s because we’re strong in the Force. The dark side is fueled by emotion, and that’s why it comes to us more easily than the light. Because we feel deeply.”

Leia nods. “I didn’t understand it that way, back then,” she admits. “What did I know about the Force, or children, or anything but war? And he was so powerful, so young. I had no idea how to handle him. I wanted to protect him from his own feelings—and from mine, too, all my fear and anger and doubt. Those things are natural, but I thought I could shield him from them. I thought it would help him. That was my mistake.”

“Pa says you have to let it pass through you,” Shmi says quietly. “Your feelings, the Force—whatever’s troubling you. You can’t lock it away or burn it out of you, but you can get to know the thing inside you. You can come to an understanding, so it’s less like a monster and more like an old friend. He says that’s how you live with it. I’m not very good at it yet. Obviously.”

Leia gives Shmi a long, examining look. Her eyes are dark. “If things had gone the way I planned,” she says, “I don’t think your adoptive parents would’ve known what to do with you, any more than I would’ve. But your father—” An expression flickers across her face, not quite sorrow. “He understands you, in a way that I didn’t understand him. I see that now. I’m glad he’s been there for you. He’s raised a brave girl.”

“He’s not the only person who raised me,” Shmi points out, straightening a little. It’s bothered her, these last few days, how everyone minces around Hux like his very name is a land mine. She and Delphine didn’t just spring into existence on their own. “I have two dads.”

Leia pauses. Diplomatically, she says, “I’m sure you can understand why your other father is a difficult subject.”

“Of course. But if that’s the case—” She hesitates, then pushes ahead, her heart beating unevenly. “Maybe you shouldn’t have invited Delphine and me, not if you’re going to pretend our dad doesn’t exist.”

“I can’t accept him, Shmi. Not even for your sake.”

“Then that’s your problem, not mine. I don’t care what he did,” Shmi says stubbornly, and she isn’t sure if it’s a lie. Sometimes, her father’s past—his crimes—are like a gaping black hole, pulling her in, inescapable. Other times, she can almost forget, at least for a little while.

“You will someday,” Leia says. There’s something sad in her voice when she says it, in her eyes.

Shmi winces; she can’t help it. “So you never killed anyone? Is that what you’re saying?”

A moment passes. Then Leia allows, “I have, in wartime. But—”

“But nothing! All those Star Destroyers you blew up were full of officers and stormtroopers—but there were technicians, too, and engineers, and maintenance workers, and probably a lot of other people who didn’t want to be there at all. Half the stormtroopers were conscripted, anyway. You killed them. You murdered people who’d been forced into service. Thousands and thousands of people.”

“Is that you talking, or Hux?”

Shmi’s mouth falls open. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s all well and good to say that we’re just looking at things from opposite sides, that each of us seems wicked from where the other is standing,” Leia says, in a low voice. “I’m sure that’s what he told you. But it’s not that simple, Shmi. War makes killers of us all, but Hux committed an atrocity. You can’t even compare it to other war crimes, because the scale is unimaginable. It was an evil and unforgivable act, and I—”

“You don’t have to forgive him,” Shmi snaps, her pulse kicking up. “He doesn’t want your forgiveness! He doesn’t need it. And I don’t need your permission to care about him, either. I don’t want to play this game where I’m only acceptable to you as long as we pretend to forget where I came from.”

“Shmi—”

“I know what my parents did,” she says, her voice hard but thin, like a sheet of glass, threatening to break. “Every horrible thing. They never hid the truth from me. I have to live with their legacy, and decide what it means to me—just like Pa had to come to terms with you, and Darth Vader, and all the rest. And it’s hard. Sometimes I think I’ll never really get a grip on it. But whatever he did, I can’t deny my dad. I won’t. He’s part of me. And if you can’t understand that, then I guess you didn’t really want to know me at all.”

It’s funny, almost, that she’s been so critical of Hux lately, furious with him—and yet, she can’t stand to hear anyone else breathe a bad word about him. That cuts too deeply.

“Maybe my dad really is the worst person in the galaxy,” Shmi says, her voice thick. “But he has someone he loves. And he has people who love him. That counts for something. It proves he’s a person, not just some symbol for you to curse and spit on.”

Leia doesn’t speak for a moment. Her expression is carefully neutral, but her eyes are very dark; Shmi can’t guess at what she’s thinking. They just look at each other for what feels like an age, until at last Leia says, “I know he’s important to you. You wouldn’t exist if not for him—I’m grateful for that, at least. And I know he had just as much a part in raising you as Ben. I shouldn’t have tried to diminish that.”

It’s not an apology, not exactly, but Shmi thinks that’s probably about as close to one as Leia Organa gets. For now, she’ll take it. Nodding a little, says, her voice small, “It’s okay.”

A second passes. Then Leia clears her throat. “I didn’t have a chance to give you your Life Day present,” she says, reaching for a hidden pocket in her dress. “It’s just something small—”

“You don’t have to,” Shmi says quickly, feeling her face redden.

“Give it a look first, before you decide.” Leia offers a handheld datapad, a newer model than Shmi is used to.

Cautiously, Shmi boots up the datapad. It’s loaded with holorecordings, both still images and vids. Scrolling through the thumbnails, her eyes widen. There’s so much: Leia, maybe twelve years old, posing with her father, Bail, for a formal portrait. Candid images of Breha Organa, her hair worn loose, rather than arranged in the traditional queen’s braids. A younger, beardless Luke Skywalker with a giggling, dark-haired baby in his arms who can only be Rey. Personal photos of Padmé Amidala, many of them also featuring her handmaidens.

She lingers on photos of her father, in his youth; in this moment, she doesn’t know whether to think of him as Kylo or Ben. Nine or ten, play-wrestling with Chewbacca. A baby, asleep on Han Solo’s chest. A gawky teenager in simple robes, pictured with his uncle. It must’ve been taken while her dad was training with Luke. Shmi notices a particular holo of her dad and Leia. He looks about Shmi’s age, already much taller and broader than his mother. Both of them are smiling for the holorecorder, but Shmi can’t help but wonder what was really going on behind their eyes.

She stops again on a grainy, washed-out holophoto of a middle-aged human woman with dark hair and darker eyes. Her face is weathered but kind. Shmi has never seen her before, and yet something about this woman prickles her memory. “Is that—?”

“Shmi Skywalker,” Leia says. “Your great-great-grandmother. I didn’t think there were any photos of her, since the Lars homestead was completely destroyed—but I found this one in an old chattel registry.”

“This—this is—” Shmi’s eyes are stinging. Overwhelmed, she doesn’t know what to say. Kylo venerates Shmi Skywalker; he says she was loved by the Force, that she was special, just like his daughter. That was why he wanted them to share a name. Shmi never thought she’d set eyes on her.

“Since you’ve been curious about our family, I thought this would be a good place to start,” Leia says. Then she hesitates. “You don’t have to accept my gift if you don’t want it. But…” She seems to choose her words carefully. “There’s something you could give me, something I’d like very much.” 

Reluctantly, Shmi pulls her gaze from the holo. “What?”

“Would you let me braid your hair?” 

That gives Shmi pause. The request isn’t as simple as it sounds. On Alderaan, she’s been told, hair and the presentation thereof was ingrained in the culture. There was a traditional braid pattern for anything that mattered—braids for mourning and for celebrating, for husbands and mothers, for artisans and merchants. The many different knots and plaits all had their own meanings, a subtle and complex language woven into one’s hair that could indicate social status, personal relationships, heritage, even mood. A few styles were worn only by the Royal House of Alderaan, some of which evoked the central symbol of Alderaan’s traditional religion: a sacred tree, around which the capital city was built. The tree had stood for millennia, and may have stood forever, if not for the Death Star.

Shmi asked her father, once, why he never braided his own hair, though he kept it long enough. “I don’t have the right,” Kylo told her, and while he didn’t sound sad, exactly, there was something mournful in his eyes. “I relinquished it a long time ago.”

“Okay,” Shmi says at last, to Leia. “Yeah, you can—okay.”

She ducks into the tiny refresher for a comb and a handful of hair pins, and then together, the two of them go to the low couch. Shmi sits angled away, her back to Leia, who takes a seat just behind her. She’s never been this close to Leia before—except, no, that’s not true. Leia held her when she was a baby. It’s strange to think about. Taking a breath, Shmi removes the metal clasp that holds her hair in a loose tail, then sweeps her hair over her shoulders so it falls in a curtain down her back.

Leia begins by combing her hair out, separating it into sections. “You have such beautiful hair,” she comments. “Has it ever been cut?”

“Just the ends,” Shmi says. Since she was small, Kylo has stressed the importance of caring for her hair, keeping it healthy so it doesn’t need more than a trim. He seems proud that her hair is so long, to the small of her back.

“My mother taught me to braid,” Leia goes on. Her words are measured, like she’s repeating a story she knows by heart. “She learned from her mother, who learned from her mother, back and back, for a thousand generations. I showed your father, when he was a boy. But I never got around to teaching him this one.”

“Why not?”

For a moment, Leia doesn’t answer. Then she says, “I thought there would be more time.”

“Oh.” Shmi thinks she knows the feeling. Closing her eyes, she focuses on the feeling of Leia’s hands manipulating her hair, the familiar rhythm of the comb.

When she was younger, Kylo used to braid Shmi’s hair each morning, making sure it was perfect, and then comb it out at night before bed. He told her that she would’ve been considered a great beauty on Alderaan for her hair alone, and sometimes he would speak to her in that lilting language she always liked to hear but didn’t fully understand. Even now, she only knows bits and pieces, pretty words like “mija” and “cariña” and “mi tesora.” The feeling of his hands sliding through her hair was comforting.

She’s been managing her own hair for years now, of course, and she doesn’t usually bother with the braids. Even the simpler ones can take a long time to do properly; most days, it’s easier to just tie it back in a simple tail before going to work in the garage, or practice lightsaber forms, or take a speeder across town to run errands for her dads.

More than once, Shmi has considered cutting all her hair off and being done with it. A couple of years ago, she shaved the sides as a test, just to see how it felt before she took the plunge. Such long hair is impractical; it’s heavy and requires a great deal of care. But she hasn’t chopped it off yet. Each time she considers it, something stays her hand. Kylo wouldn’t criticize her for cutting her hair, she knows he wouldn’t, but she has a feeling that it would break his heart.

“My dad taught me how to braid,” Shmi offers at last, in a quiet voice. She feels that she owes this to Leia, all of a sudden, that she ought to know. “Delphine, too. And he’s told us things—the sacred tree, the roots and the branches. He didn’t forget. It meant something to him. It still does.”

Leia’s hands go still for a moment, faltering, before she picks up the rhythm again. “Thank you,” she says eventually. “For telling me.”

They sit in silence for what feels like a long time. Shmi’s thoughts turn back to the beginning of their conversation. “I came here because I was curious about you,” she says, after a while. “I wanted to meet you. It was that simple. But my dad wouldn’t hear of it, which just made me more curious. And later, it made me mad.” She grimaces at the memory. “I think I wanted to hurt him, and I used you to do it.”

“Your dad,” Leia repeats thoughtfully. “Hux?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you want to hurt him?”

“I was angry with him, for a lot of reasons. We fought before I left. Now we’re not talking.” Her voice tightens as she thinks of the words she threw at Hux, the way he’d looked at her. “I ruined it, just like I ruined this. He can’t stand me—”

“No,” Leia says, with surprising gentleness, stroking her hair. Shmi stiffens at her touch—it feels intimate, knowing, like something her dad might do—and then relaxes for just that reason. “That’s not possible. There’s nothing you could do that would make him hate you.”

Shmi is shaking her head. “You don’t know that. And you don’t know him, either.”

“Trust me on this one. Whoever he is, and whatever he’s done, he loves you. I know that much.” Her voice is sad, almost. Shmi wonders if she’s thinking of Kylo, her enduring attachment to him, despite everything he’s done—but she can’t bear to ask.

“It’ll never be like it was,” she says instead, hoarsely. That night, something between them cracked. Both of them said things that changed their view of each other. They won’t ever have that perfect, peaceful closeness again, which they enjoyed during her childhood. She can feel a sort of emptiness where it used to be, and it aches.

“Maybe not. But that’s not such a bad thing. You’ll come to a new understanding.”

Shmi doesn’t quite believe her. She says nothing while Leia continues to manipulate her hair.

“There,” Leia announces at last. “Finished.”

Cautiously, Shmi reaches up to feel her hair, probing with her fingertips. She doesn’t recognize the pattern by touch. Leia has woven her hair into a complex and unfamiliar braid, then coiled it around the crown her head. The whole thing is secured by a couple of skillfully-hidden pins. “What is it for?” she asks.

“It’s for an eldest child of the House of Organa. A princess.”

“Oh.” When she was a little girl, “princess” was Kylo’s nickname for her. She didn’t know what he really meant by it until she was older. Of course, she’ll never be a true princess of Alderaan. She’ll never take up the Rhindon Sword, or undergo the challenges of body, heart, and mind to prove herself worthy to bear the crown. Much and more was lost when Alderaan was destroyed. But at least one tradition remains: the braids. Slowly, she turns to look at Leia, whose expression is somber, but also hopeful. “Thank you.”

“I can show you other braids,” Leia says. “If you’ll let me.”

Shmi allows herself to smile. Then she tells her grandmother, “I’d like that very much.”

 

\--

 

By the time Shmi and Leia make it back to the house, fireworks are blooming in the blue-black sky overhead, each with a resounding boom that Shmi almost feels in her chest. They find Delphine and Kylo near the Life Day tree, sitting on a blanket spread over the grass, their faces upturned. As she approaches, Shmi’s steps slow—Chewbacca and Lando are with them. She wonders if they’ve all been out here playing a card game; the thought makes her smile.

Kylo doesn’t say anything when Shmi sits beside him, just slides an arm around her shoulders. She leans into him, grateful, and she thinks he knows. Leia joins them, too, without a word. The six of them sit in companionable silence, color streaking across the sky.

Sometime after midnight, the fireworks end, but the party doesn’t; most people won’t go to bed until dawn. In the soft, multicolored glow of the Life Day tree, Shmi pulls out the little datapad Leia gave to her. They gather around it, sorting through holos and vids, telling Shmi and Delphine what they remember.

Mostly, they share stories about Han Solo. Kylo joins in the conversation, to Shmi’s surprise. He’s making an effort, she can tell, and so is Leia—to be present now, to focus on the good memories, instead of the painful ones. And there were more good memories than Shmi had realized.

“Hold on, I thought you were sick that week,” Leia says at one point, her eyebrows arched, when Kylo pointed out a holo that was taken on the _Falcon_ when he was twelve. Han and Lando had smuggled him into a casino because he could make the sabacc machine deal whatever cards he wanted. At the time, Leia was off-planet on senate business. “Han told me that’s why you were out of school.”

Kylo smiled faintly. “Yeah, about that—any time he said I was sick as a kid, we were probably at a casino. Or an illegal drag race. Or an underground fight club. He said it built character.”

Chewie gurgles and growls, and Shmi laughs along with everyone else, no explanation needed. She couldn’t translate the Wookiee’s words if someone put a blaster to her head—and yet, when she focuses, she understands his meaning completely. It’s another gift from the Force, she thinks—yet another thing to be grateful for on Life Day.

She’d never imagined this, never dared to: sitting with her father and her grandmother, connecting over the past, looking hopefully toward a future that might include all of them. And yet, here they are.

It might only last for tonight. But it’s real.

 

\--

 

Four days later, when Delphine presents Hux with the sweater she bought him on Yavin—orange and green, sort of lumpy, emblazoned with a Shyriiwook phrase that Kylo says is nonsense—he politely admires it. He appreciates the gesture, Shmi can tell, but deep down, he’s also wondering how he could’ve raised a daughter with such awful taste. Delphine is supposed to be the reasonable one. “This is a very thoughtful gift,” Hux manages at last. He folds the sweater again. “I’ll keep it in a safe place.”

“You’re not going to wear it?” Delphine asks, a note of hurt in her voice. 

Hux seems to grapple internally with something. And then, with a kind of long-suffering dignity, looking only slightly pained, he says, “Of course I will, darling.”

He’s still wearing the hideous sweater when Kylo and Delphine go out to pick up dinner, leaving Shmi and Hux at home.

Kylo did that on purpose, she knows, to give her a shove in what he thinks is the right direction. He wants to force her to face Hux, but he needn’t have bothered. She’s known for a long time now that she needs to talk to him. It’s just a matter of knowing what to say.

When she walks into the empty sitting room, Shmi notices with surprise that the holophotos are lined up on the end table again—the ones she broke. Hux must’ve repaired them while the rest of the family was away, put the datachips in new frames. Her eyes catch on one of the more recent pictures, of her and Hux, taken last year. He doesn’t usually agree to be photographed, for reasons that Shmi doesn’t pretend to understand, but Kylo was persistent, complaining that he had only a few pictures of the two of them together.

Side by side, Shmi supposes they do look somewhat alike, but only if you’re looking for it. And she’s looking for it now.

“Shmi?” She jumps a little when she hears Hux’s voice, spinning around to see him in the kitchen doorway. Guiltily, she notices the thin scar on his forehead. He’ll have it forever. “I thought you’d gone out.”

“Hey, Dad,” she says, a little hesitantly. It’s been weeks since they had a real conversation. Standing in front of him now, she feels awkward, almost embarrassed—and through the Force, she senses that he does, too. “No, I wanted to stay in.” She points at the end table. “You repaired the pictures.”

“Ah. Well, yes.” He seems surprised that she noticed. “You know your father—he would’ve missed them.”

Shmi nods. “So, I was sort of hoping that we could…” She shifts her weight from foot to foot, then looks up at him. “You know, talk.”

“Of course,” he says, too quickly, a note of tension in his voice. He edges closer to her, just a few steps, moving like he’s trying not to scare her off.

Stiffly, Hux sits on the couch, and she perches beside him, just a few inches of space between them. It’s been a while since they’ve been this close, aside from edging around each other in the kitchen or the stairwell—close enough to touch. Shmi pulls a throw pillow onto her lap, picks at a loose thread.

“Did you enjoy your trip?” Hux asks eventually, with a kind of force politeness, and she almost laughs at the absurdity of it. He sounds like he’s making smalltalk with a stranger. Even now, they can’t just come out and say what they mean.

“Yeah,” she tells him, glancing up, because it’s true. “Yeah, I did. I guess you probably didn’t enjoy it as much.”

“You’re not wrong,” he acknowledges. “I had… concerns, about you visiting your extended relatives.”

“What, you thought they’d kidnap us or something?” That was the impression she’d gotten when she was younger. Shmi used to be afraid that Leia would steal her and Delphine away at any moment, if she got the chance, and hide them from their parents. It seems silly when she thinks of it now, but at the time, the danger felt real to her.

“No, no, nothing like that.” Hux pauses, choosing his words, eyes focused on a particular spot on the floor. “I imagined you spending time with your cousin, and all the others. You’d hear their stories. Get to know them. Become attached. And I imagined that, when you came back, you’d be disgusted by me. You might refuse to come back at all. You might never speak to me again, you or your sister. And I couldn’t…”

“Couldn’t what?”

“I couldn’t bear it. Even the thought of it.” When he looks at her, his expression is tight, pinched, like something sharp is digging into him. “Shmi, darling, try to understand—the minute you were born, they took you from me. I thought I would die without ever seeing you.”

“I know.”

“Did I ever tell you that Organa brought you to me, later?”

That brings Shmi up short. “No,” she says, a little stunned. “No, you never said.”

“She took pity on me. Or maybe she was only being kind. Either way, she brought you to my cell, just that once. You already looked so much like your father, not like me at all. I remember thinking that was a good thing. You were this perfect, innocent little creature. I almost couldn’t believe you were mine.” When he looks at her, intently, he doesn’t smile—it seems beyond him just now, too much to manage. “I held you, and I didn’t know how I was going to give you back to her. It would be too painful. But I had to, eventually. I knew you weren’t mine to keep.”

He’s looking at her now almost the same way he looked into the holorecorder, that night in the kitchen: heartbroken, but resigned, like he’d accepted his fate. All at once, Shmi wants to repair whatever’s been broken between them, but she doesn’t know how.

“And then Pa came for us,” she says, quietly, because that’s the next part of the story. When she was little, always begging Kylo to tell her about how they became a family, she thought of it as a tale with a happy ending—as if it were already over, as if they would all live happily ever after and nothing would change.

The faintest smile touches his mouth, then falters. “Yes. One of many gifts he’s given me. I still don’t know what I did to deserve any of it.” He takes a breath, as though steeling himself. “You’re nearly an adult now, I know that. Of course you’ll leave eventually. It wasn’t meant to be forever. But I thought—rather, I hoped—” He breaks off. It’s strange to hear him use a word like that: _hope._ Shmi has never known her father to deal much in abstracts. “I already lost you once. I didn’t think I’d survive it a second time.”

“But you wouldn’t have lost me,” Shmi says, wishing she’d had the words to tell him this months ago, wishing he’d given some sign that this was what he’d been afraid of. She hesitates, searching for the words. She’s not eloquent, never has been. “When I said I wanted to see Leia, it wasn’t supposed to be a reflection on you. There were things I wanted to know that you couldn’t tell me. There were people I wanted to meet. I wasn’t trying to upset you. I never—” She swallows, hard. All of a sudden, her throat aches, and her voice is thick. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

He starts to reach for her, but holds back. “Shmi—”

“I hate what you did. Starkiller, the war, all of it. I hate it, but I love you,” Shmi says, and she means it, down to her bones. Her voice creaks dangerously. She feels her eyes welling and tries to blink the hot tears back, which only makes it worse, blurring her vision. “You know that, right? I want to know Leia, and I want you, too, but I can’t—there’s no way to—” Something cracks. She slumps against him almost helplessly, pressing her face into his shoulder. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. It’s a mess.”

“I know,” Hux is saying, with a gentleness that she hasn’t heard in a long time. He kisses the side of her head, pulls her closer to his body. “I know, my darling, it’s all right…”

For half a minute, he just holds her, without speaking. She lets herself cry a little, overwhelmed, knowing he won’t tell anyone and grateful for it. The smell of him is familiar: the clean scent of soap on his skin, mixed with the sharper smell of engine grease that somehow seeps into all of his clothes, no matter how often they’re washed. It takes her back to when she was small, when he used to hold her in his lap and tell her stories. She’d always felt so safe then. She feels that way now.

Eventually, she says, “It just feels like it’s one or the other.” 

“I’m sorry for that. I never wanted to force you to choose.” She feels Hux sigh, his breath ruffling her hair. “Largely because I knew there’d be no contest.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve spent your whole life waiting for you to look up and see me for what I am.” There’s a mournful note in his voice. “I like to think I’ve been honest with you, answered your questions. But I couldn’t believe you really _understood_ it all—because if you did, you’d be sickened. Anyone would be.”

“And then what—you thought I’d hate you?” Shmi’s voice is muffled against his shoulder. “You thought I’d never talk to you again, just like that?”

“Most people grow up to hate their father,” Hux says, matter-of-fact. “And we both know who I am.”

He’s been so many people, Shmi thinks, past and present: Niall, the human mechanic. General Armitage Hux, who destroyed the Hosnian System. Within the sanctuary of their home, he’s simply Hux, Kylo Ren’s husband, the man who would’ve been emperor. It seems impossible that they should all be the same person—the same man who read Shmi stories, and taught her to play holochess, and fretted over her when she was sick. But here he is.

“Yeah. I know who you are,” she says softly, lifting her face to look at him. She can see herself reflected in his eyes. “You’re my dad.”

 

\--

 

The fuel depot is mostly empty at this time of day. When Shmi approaches the counter, rainwater dripping from her coat, Uma is the only one working. Delphine wanders off to examine a new tool display, while Shmi takes a few deep breaths and reminds herself to act normal.

Uma is leaning her elbows on the counter, reading a holomag, but looks up at the sound of Shmi’s boots. A smile spread across her face; it always takes her a second longer to smile than it would take a human, due to the muscular structure of her face, which always makes Shmi feel oddly as if she means it more. Uma’s skin is smooth and golden brown. She has three liquid-dark eyes, no nose to speak of, and delicately pointed ears that part her short, dark, feather-soft hair. Shmi is sort of obsessed with her, but simultaneously tries to avoid being looked at her whenever possible.

“You’re back,” Uma says brightly, in lightly accented Basic. “The usual?”

“Yeah. Two barrels, please.”

Uma presses a few buttons on her register display, sending the order to the guys in the warehouse around back. Shmi will have to pull the speeder around to pick up the fuel when the transaction is done. Then Uma pushes her holomag aside, focusing on Shmi. “So how was Yavin?”

“Fine,” Shmi bleats. She mentioned the trip to Uma weeks ago—leaving out the whole Skywalker family reunion part, of course—but she never imagined Una would remember. “I mean, it was nice. Have you ever celebrated Life Day?” 

“Isn’t that a Wookiee holiday?”

“I have a Wookiee uncle, kind of,” Shmi says with a shrug. She counts out her money and moves to place it on the counter. “It’s a long story.” 

All three of Uma’s eyes widen curiously. She leans across the counter and takes the money directly from Shmi’s hand; her skin is very soft. “That’s so interesting,” she says, in a tone she’s never used with Shmi before. “I’d love to hear more about it. But I’m stuck at work for three more hours.”

Shmi’s brain stutters. She’s seen enough holos to know what Uma is saying, and she’s certainly imagined this scenario more than once, but she’s struggling to accept that it’s actually happening. Finally, she manages a weak cough. “I could pick you up when you get off work, if you don’t have plans,” she says at last, in a voice that isn’t totally strained. Her heart is doing something weird and fast in her chest, but not quite painful. “We could talk. Over dinner. If you want.” 

“Oh, I’d like that very much,” Uma says, with another smile. “I’ll meet you out front. Also, I like Calamari noodles.”

Shmi chooses to take that as a sign from the Force.

 

\--

 

Muffled voices float from the kitchen as Shmi steps into the apartment—laughter, and then some noises that sound alarmingly like kissing. Something clatters to the floor. Shmi slows, furrowing her brow. They’re not doing what she thinks they’re doing, are they? She glances worriedly at Delphine, but her sister has apparently switched off her hearing enhancers and is now blithely unlacing her boots. Lucky her. 

“Get off me, you beast,” Hux is saying, but he doesn’t sound annoyed. “The girls will be home any minute.”

“Then we’ll do the quick version,” Kylo replies, without hesitation. He must be very distracted at the moment, since he hasn’t sensed Shmi and Delphine in the next room yet. “We’ll leave our shirts on.”

Hux laughs. “Absolutely not! You’re a menace—”

Kylo hums. “You just want to be convinced. I know how to do that.”

That’s enough, Shmi decides, and clomps loudly around the sitting room before they can get any farther. She gives them enough time to register her presence and make themselves presentable, though she devoutly hopes they haven’t done anything indecent in the kitchen where they all eat. “We’re home,” she calls, louder than necessary, just to be safe.

“Ah. Good,” Hux calls back, his voice a little strangled. “Did you stop by the fuel depot?”

“Yeah. The barrels are in the garage. I’m heading out again in a little while, by the way.” She just wants to wash her face, maybe put on her good bra. Better to be prepared.

A few seconds pass, and then Hux appears in the kitchen doorway. His hair is mussed, his clothes are subtly askew, and his face a little red, but he manages to look suspicious all the same, his eyes clear and sharp. He knows full-well that Shmi doesn’t really have friends, so she doesn’t usually have a reason to go out at night. “What for?”

“I have a—thing,” Shmi says awkwardly.

“A thing?” Kylo wanders out of the kitchen, absently touching Hux’s lower back as they pass in the doorway, an unconscious gesture. Shmi thinks suddenly, strangely, of Finn and Poe, how they were always looking for excuses to touch. Maybe her dads aren’t so different after all—she just never noticed it before.

“I’m just meeting Uma.”

“That three-eyed xeno from the fuel depot?” Hux sounds faintly alarmed. “What for?”

“They’re going on a date,” Delphine says unhelpfully, breezing past Shmi on her way to the kitchen. Shmi is scandalized. Sometimes Del just pretends to turn the enhancers off, so people will talk freely in front of her. Little traitor.

“Hang tight, kiddo, we’re about to have dinner,” Kylo says to Delphine, in an attempt to redirect her from the fridge. Then he looks back at Shmi, eyebrows raised. “Now let’s talk about this date.”

Shmi wilts. “Can we not? It isn’t—I mean, it’s not a big deal. We’re just getting noodles—”

“Not looking like that, you’re not,” Hux says suddenly. His frown deepens as he looks her up and down, like he’s appraising a piece of art.

“What?”

“If you expect that girl to go out with you more than once, you’ll take a shower and do something about your hair. And you’ll put on something that’s not grease-stained or wrinkled.”

Shmi’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out for a second. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Nothing,” Kylo says quickly. He gives her a supportive smile, then adds: “You have beautiful hair. And it happens to look even prettier when you put it up. Or comb it. Whatever you like.”

“Pa,” Shmi complains loudly—but, well, he’s probably right. Her hair can actually look kind of impressive, when she puts in the effort: a statement piece. Kylo says that the queen of Alderaan wore her crown only on special occasions; the rest of the time, all she needed was her own hair, done up in magnificent braids, to let her people know who ruled them. Shmi heaves a long-suffering sigh, more for effect than anything else. Complying too quickly sets a bad precedent. “Well—will you help me do a nice one?”

A slow smile spreads across Kylo’s face. It’s been a long time since she asked him to help with her braids. “Sure,” he says, and maybe she’s reading into it, but he seems like he doesn’t want to appear overeager. “What have you got in mind?”

 

\--

 

In the end, Shmi decides against anything elaborate. Looser and softer than the more formal braids Kylo has taught her, this one makes her hair look thick and shows off the length without looking ostentatious. It also doesn’t require too many pins to hold it in place. When she checks her reflection in the mirror by the front door, she’s pleased with the finished product. So was Kylo.

While she jams her feet into her boots—scuffed, but comfortable—Hux makes some noise about how her wardrobe is almost nothing but coveralls, training clothes, and baggy sweaters. “You dress like a field hand,” he says with an exasperated sigh.

“I dress like you,” Shmi points out.

“Well, I used to look much more professional.”

“Yeah, uniforms kind of take the guesswork out of it.”

“Shush,” he says, but she can tell he’s humored. He clasps his hands behind his back, giving her another once-over, from top to bottom. “You look perfectly respectable. Now, I believe this is the part where you ask to borrow a speeder.”

“The Parwen 690, please,” Shmi says, with a hopeful smile.

He scoffs. “The 690? You’re dreaming. You can have the Nox 30.”

“But that’s the junker!”

“So if you ding it again, it’s no great loss. Would you be less embarrassed to walk?”

“No, Dad,” Shmi says with an exaggerated sigh. Then she catches him looking at her with an odd expression—amused, maybe, but also a little sad. She pauses. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not your ‘nothing’ face.”

“I was just thinking, that’s all,” Hux says. His voice is soft and fond. “I wanted the galaxy once. I didn’t get it. But I did get you.”

“Not bad for a runner-up prize,” Shmi says, in a playful tone, though her heart feels suddenly full.

That makes him smile. He brushes a few stray strands of hair behind her ear, gently. “All right, that’s enough talk about feelings for one night,” he says with a sigh. “Be back at a reasonable hour.”

“I will.”

“And take the 690.”

Shmi studies him for a moment, cautious, half expecting him to take back the offer. “Wait, really?”

“Don’t say I never do anything nice for you,” Hux says.

“You’re entirely too good to me,” Shmi tells him, and though she means it, the words still make him laugh. Funny, she thinks, and strange—Kylo always says that Shmi and Hux have precisely the same scowl. But looking at him now, she realizes that they also look the same when they smile.

**Author's Note:**

> and so we come to the end—for now, at least. I have more ideas for this series that I’d like to pursue, but at the moment, I feel comfortable with where we are.
> 
> thank you to everyone who has come with me on this trip: reading along, commenting, sending tumblr messages. your support has meant so much to me, truly. I don’t know what I did to deserve such sweet and thoughtful readers.
> 
> okay, now for the proper notes: I pulled a few small details from Leia: Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray, a book which seems to support my headcanon of a braid culture on Alderaan. any remaining nonsense can be blamed on me.
> 
> speaking of headcanons, y’all know how I feel about Alderaan as Space Puerto Rico and Leia as an adopted Space Latina. in this au, Ben would’ve picked up Space Spanish from Leia as a child. all these years later, Kylo is rusty but conversational. he never bothered to teach his daughters and sort of regrets it. Shmi and Delphine know a few words and phrases, but that’s all.
> 
> I did some digging to see if there’s already a goofy Star Wars term for hearing aids, and all I found was a Mandalorian character from the old EU who used “hearing enhancers,” which I gather to be the same thing.
> 
> come yell at me about soft kylux [on tumblr](http://saltandrockets.tumblr.com/). xoxo


End file.
